It focussed on the way in which multi-national shippers deal with the control of transport invoices.

As a result of a 100% verification of correctly used tariffs, numbers and weights, more than 8% of costs can be saved in the financial supply chain, from the moment of the actual order to the final payment of the freight invoice.

For Europe alone, the total transport costs amount to more than €900bn. Not implementing such 100% control causes a yearly disadvantage for this business sector of €72bn.

It has been known for a while that more and more multinationals move their production units to the so called ‘best cost countries’ or are considering doing so. This will mean longer supply lines, more complexity and more combinations of several types of transport. The freight invoice is becoming almost in-auditable.

The Aberdeen Group research also shows that 81% of the investigated companies are planning to implement cost reducing measures during the next two years, which will be mainly in the areas of procurement, invoice control and payment. These should then also be centralised, possibly with an external party.

This phenomenon, the so called ‘Freight Payment’, the outsourcing of the control and payment of transport invoices, has existed in the USA for years now, due to governmental regulation. In Europe it is however completely new and so far there is only one company, ControlPay specialising in this area.