Data Insight Services

What does digital mean to FLS? – being digital in road freight is the opportunity to use the most advanced technology to make road freight simpler for everyone involved.

Data has overtaken oil in being the most valuable commodity on the planet. When refined into insights, data drives good decision making and better results in revenue opportunities, cost savings and more efficient operations for companies. Refined data enables critical changes to be made before costs are incurred, as opposed to in the rear-view mirror.

Here at FLS our technology driven, digital solutions unlock data and insights that have previously been unobtainable from traditional asset based logistic providers. FLS proprietary systems manage your transport orders fully digitally on a dedicated platform enabling full transparency from quote & order, live tracking & alerts to document management & payment.

• Accurate and timely management information and board reporting
• Real time operational analytics embedded in our digital client portal
• Bespoke reporting to individual client requirements, our data is your data

Dynamic live dashboard providing a status on all your bookings across date range selected. vehicle type, customer or destination:

Downloadable monthly reports on your freight transport traffic and the related costs:

Green Data live dashboard provided details of your transport carbon spend across date range of your choice, customer or vehicle type:

For many manufacturers, the last few years have seen the first-time transport become the largest cost element of the unit cost of their product – above labour and materials. So, understanding that cost is vitally important to maintain target profitability.

Here at FLS, we absorb a lot of data into our data warehouse, where freight went, when, what routes it took, how often, on what vehicle, for how much – how long did it take, what was the value of the goods and how many units were there, how many drops, waiting times, storage, and what was the carbon impact?.

Using our specialist analytics tools and looking at the big data and important data analytics.

From analysing big data we access customer insights which helps to better predict lane demand. From this, we can improve customers experience by generating actionable insights for clients into their freight transport activity and help suggest how this could be altered, improved, streamlined based on our sector insight and the picture the data gives us.

What might be the cost-saving of shipping to that client on Thursday morning rather than Friday afternoon – is the saving per unit item worth changing our production schedule to ship Thursday?

Benefits of Freight Data Analytics

With access to the right data and analytics tools on top of the data, businesses get an advantage in decision-making. The benefits of data insight are not just limited to reduced freight costs. An ideal logistics solution for any sector whether that be retail warehousing logistics, flexible packaging or a different freight logistics sector.

Data analytics enable companies to make better business decisions and actionable insights:

• Compare past data to enhance efficiency
• Streamline overall supply chain processes
• Track and optimise key performance indicators
• Identify optimal delivery routes
• Build and test new business models
• Make targeted and better-informed decisions
• Optimise profits

We all know the term
“Rubbish In = Rubbish Out”
Data is critical!

A company needs to determine what they want to achieve…

• Reduce costs?
• Increase revenue?
• Optimise transit times?
• Improve their customer relationships?

These are all serious strategic issues for both a carrier and a shipper, which affects profitability on every voyage. The trader needs to sit with a company like ours to figure out the questions in transport analytics that need to be asked in order to affect positive outcomes and determine what is the traditional and non-traditional data that goes into affecting profitability. 

Crucial insights for the transportation and logistics industries

While the sheer volume of data available to a company today is daunting, the first step in leveraging ‘big data’ is deciding on the problem you want to be solved, or the issues you need addressing, and then finding the proper data necessary. It’s more than just ‘look-back information’, of say how many TEUs you shipped in May from Shanghai to Dover, or Full loads to Amsterdam over the past six months, but rather pulling the data necessary to ship them cheaper, faster, or to achieve whatever metric you need to be addressed.

Despite what may seem to be an improving freight market, the need is great to monitor it almost on a daily basis. Congestion at ports, bankruptcies, acquisitions, changes within alliances and potentially new ones can all impact your freight invoice.

FLS first began operations and immediately acknowledged the importance of Data in regard to assisting your company in achieving its business objectives, whether reducing costs or improving efficiency, or increasing sales. When properly used, Data will enable management to take a gut-feel decision and quantify it, which lets them take that good idea and make it work.

FLS recommends identifying beforehand what needs to be analysed, such as buyer and seller habits, customer satisfaction (or lack of), market trends, fuel costs, rates, material costs, duty and so on.

At FLS, we have the industry, business and technical expertise needed to make sense of the data. We’ll work with our customers to articulate and advise on their strategic direction and answer business-critical questions based on the facts we see coming from the data we hold:

• What problems are you trying to resolve?
• What direction do you want to go?
• What data do you need bringing forward