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Blog · Alternatives and comparisons · Shipping and logistics

How to choose analytics software for shipping and logistics: questions, data and traps

How forwarders should choose analytics software: start from the questions, check the data you hold, ask vendors ten questions, avoid the traps.

By CoviragePublished 24 September 20264 min read
The short answerStart from the questions forwarders ask every month, not from features. List the exports you already hold, ask every vendor what it needs before the first answer and whether its AI calculates figures, and check that every total reconciles. Then compare the first-year cost, all in.

Most buying decisions for analytics start from a feature list. For forwarders the better start is the questions that come back every month, the files already on hand, and the traps that make a tool look right in a demonstration and wrong in the first board meeting.

Start from the questions

The question The measure behind it
Where is gross profit per shipment falling? Gross profit per shipment
How much of each customer's trade lane do we carry? Trade lane share per customer
What are detention and demurrage costing us, and what did we recover? Detention and demurrage
How reliable are our transit times? Transit time reliability
How long from booking to invoice? Booking to invoice cycle
Which customer lanes have gone dormant? Dormant customer lanes

Any tool you consider should answer these from your data, not from a sample. Ask to see it.

The data you already hold

  • Shipment file
  • Customer volumes by source grade
  • Milestone data
  • Quotes
  • Customs entry file
  • Charges file
  • Invoices
  • Ledger

If a vendor needs a warehouse built before it can read these, count that in the cost and the time.

Ten questions to ask any vendor

  1. What does it need in place before the first answer? A warehouse, a data model, a modelling language, a partner? Ask for the list and the typical weeks.
  2. Who does the setup, and who maintains it? Your team, the vendor, or a partner, and what that costs after year one.
  3. Does the AI calculate figures, or choose from computed ones? A language model that writes queries or code can produce a plausible wrong number. Ask what it is allowed to do.
  4. Does every total reconcile to a control figure? Ask to see a bridge that does not sum and what the product does about it.
  5. Can every figure be opened to its rows? An answer nobody can check becomes a debate in the meeting.
  6. What does it cost in the first year, all in? Licences, consumption, implementation, modelling and training, not only the seat price.
  7. How does data arrive, and who holds credentials? A file your systems already export, a scheduled drop, or a live connection with the vendor holding keys.
  8. What happens to the data, and where is it stored? Residency, retention, deletion, and whether names can be replaced with identifiers.
  9. Can we see it on our own data before we sign? A demonstration on a sample dataset tells you little about your own.
  10. What does the tool do when it cannot answer? It should say so. A confident guess does more harm than no answer.

Checks specific to shipping and logistics

Ask whether the tool enforces these, and what it does when they fail:

  • Modes: Mode totals are never added; each ties to its own shipment count
  • Customs: Entries = cleared without hold + held; every hold has a reason code
  • Charges: Detention and demurrage incurred = recharged + absorbed + disputed
  • Gross profit: Job revenue − job cost sums to the ledger

The traps

Trade lane share. Revenue by customer is reported. Which of the customer's lanes you are not on is not.

Detention and demurrage absorbed. Incurred charges are paid to the line; whether they were recharged is seldom reconciled by customer.

Booking to invoice cycle. Treated as an accounts matter, though the delay is mostly operational.

Measures to leave out

Revenue growth in a rate spike. Read volume and gross profit per unit instead.

Shipments handled, across modes. A parcel and a forty-foot container counted alike.

Quotes issued. Conversion by lane replaces it.

A scorecard

Criterion Weight Tool A Tool B Covirage
Answers our six questions on our own data High
Time to the first answer High
Needs a warehouse or data team Medium
AI calculates figures, or only explains computed ones High
Every total reconciles; figures open to rows High
First-year cost, all in Medium

Where Covirage fits

Covirage reads the exports above, answers the questions with figures our tools compute and check, and is set up for you within a week. See analytics software for shipping and logistics compared, AI analytics for shipping and logistics and Covirage for Shipping and logistics.

For the measures in full, with formulas and exports, read Commercial KPIs for freight forwarders and shipping lines.

Questions people ask

What should forwarders look for in analytics software?

The answer to their own questions, from the data they already hold, with every figure reconciled. Features matter less than what the tool needs before the first answer and who maintains it.

Is a BI suite enough for forwarders?

It can be, with a warehouse and someone to build and maintain the model. Without them, the dashboard shows what changed and the explanation is still an analyst's job.

What data do forwarders already hold?

Usually: shipment file, customer volumes by source grade, milestone data, quotes, customs entry file, charges file. Most analytics questions in this industry can be answered from those exports.

Related reading

Board and management reporting · Shipping and logistics

Booking-to-invoice cycle per customer: the days revenue waits

How a forwarder measures the time from shipment delivery to invoice issued, per customer and per branch, from the shipment milestones and the billing ledger: the median days, the shipments delivered and still unbilled past a stated age, the value waiting, the branches and customers where the cycle is longest and why, disputed accessorials, missing carrier costs, customer billing rules, and the working capital the delay ties up.

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Customs holds per customer: the entries that stopped, and the data that stopped them

How a forwarder or customs broker measures customs exceptions from its entry data: entries held per customer and per lane, hold rate against the broker's own norm, days held, the reason codes, the share caused by the customer's own data, missing commodity codes, wrong values, incomplete descriptions, against the share caused by the broker or the authority, the cost in storage and delay, and the customer conversation about the fields that stop their freight.

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Detention and demurrage per customer: the charges that leak and the customers that cause them

How a forwarder or carrier measures detention and demurrage from the container event data and the billing ledger: free time against actual dwell per container, charges incurred from carriers and terminals, charges billed on to customers, the gap between the two per customer, the customers whose containers routinely exceed free time, and the identity that ties charges incurred to charges recovered plus absorbed.

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Ten questions a forwarding managing director asks, and the table that answers each

The ten questions the managing director of a freight forwarder puts to the branch and trade lane managers, what is lane share per customer and per mode, are TEU and kilograms ever added, which customer lanes lost reliability before the tender, what detention and demurrage did we absorb and for whom, how long does delivered freight wait for an invoice, which customs holds are the customer's own data, which customers are concentrated on one carrier, what is margin per file by branch, which customers went quiet by lane, and what changed, each with the table from the bookings, milestones and billing exports, and the answer to send back.

16 Sept 20262 min read