Nolan & Cunnings: Customized Freight Management Solutions

Jonathan Vigliarolo, Managing Director

Effective freight auditing is one of the most integral and, at the same time, exceedingly complex elements of managing supply chain costs. Thus, when put into practice, most shippers turn to outsourcing freight audit and payment processes as their in-house capabilities are limited. Nolan & Cunnings (N&C), offering freight transportation consultancy for almost a century and deemed as one of the pioneers of freight audit industry, were early in realizing the significance of “auditing as a service.” Today, the company does not just ease the administrative burden of invoice processing and conducting freight audits, but also spearheads the industry by delivering a complete transportation management system (TMS) and consultancy services. The company’s advanced consultancy services cater to different areas of a business, such as production planning, material purchasing, supply chain network designing, and scenario management.

“The success of our engagements is dependent on our adeptness to accurately apply a customer’s general ledger codes as well as performing our core competency of reviewing all the freight bills and charges are within the customer defined tolerance levels,” says Jonathan Vigliarolo, managing director, Nolan & Cunnings. Reports detailing adjustments or questions regarding invoices are sent to carriers via email daily, with specific information on the issue and steps needed to rectify the discrepancies.

Nolan & Cunnings believes in developing a customized audit and technology solutions for each of their clients based on their specific needs

In addition to auditing a customer’s freight bills, the company also utilizes the data collected during the audit process to create reports based on general ledger coding, carrier utilization, transportation methods, freight spend and more to deliver actionable intelligence to reduce cost and drive process improvement.

Every company’s transportation requirements are different, rather than exercising a “one-size-fits-all” approach, N&C uses their customizable TMS platform for each client providing them with the tools and information needed to run their supply chain in the most efficient manner possible. N&C’s TMS software integrates with a client’s systems to help identify the most optimal routing option for each order. The TMS also interacts with a company’s ERP and WMS platforms to give complete control and visibility over the transportation lifecycle. Further, N&C swiftly incorporates all the shipment data into their freight audit applications to enable a three-way matchpay process, ensuring that the customers are only paying for shipments once and allowing for extremely accurate freight accruals.

Vigliarolo elucidates a scenario where one of their clients faced difficulty in determining the most efficient and low-cost transportation mode. “The client was a very large manufacturer of automotive components. They had highly irregular order quantities; sometimes they were shipping to retailers and sometimes directly to customers,” he adds. Thus, the client could not predetermine the most cost-effective mode of transportation. Evaluating their case, Nolan & Cunnings designed a customized algorithm within the TMS that automated the “rate shopping” parameter (freight rate quotation). As the system was able to automatically determine how a shipment should be transported (small parcel, less-than-truckload or full truckload) the company could reduce the freight spend by 25 percent. “Simultaneously, we also educated the users on rate shopping by asking them to look at every shipment as individual tenders and ascertaining that their choices are profitable,” mentions Vigliarolo.

Currently, Nolan & Cunnings is on the verge of another milestone by completing its cloud migration process. N&C is engaged at fortifying its suite of solutions with new launches. Next year, the company intends to roll out a completely new dashboard-driven and customizable business intelligence platform. By setting new dimensions in the freight management domain, Nolan & Cunnings envisions to burgeon as a global thought leader.