How Parade and Tai Work
Together to Help Freight
Brokerages Grow and Modernize

Many of the challenges today’s freight brokerages face can be overcome through technology that supports faster, leaner, smarter processes.

Fast-paced, modern brokerages need modern tools to help them achieve their goals. Parade’s capacity management solution integrates seamlessly with Tai’s TMS system to help freight brokerages achieve:

Common Issues That Hold Brokerages Back

There are several common pain points that many brokerages experience. These issues often hold brokerages back from achieving the growth and success they desire. We talked to Fortune Logistics and Concept Logistics, two customers who use both Parade and Tai, to understand the challenges that led them to seek out new technology.

Manual Processes

Manual processes aren’t inherently bad. Just a few short decades ago, they were the only processes. They can, however, hold companies back from booking more loads. When reps are absorbed in all the busy work that it takes to book a load using manual processes, progress can be slow. Carrier outreach can eat up hours each day. It can take a lot of time to get a load covered that way, and that means that reps don’t have the time to book more loads. Plus, there’s more room for human error when data entry is necessary to get through each step in the freight cycle.

Both Concept and Fortune used lots of manual processes throughout their operations before they implemented Parade and Tai. At Concept, it took a bare minimum of half an hour for a rep to book a simple load. Even with a highly experienced team, a load that was a little trickier to cover could take hours. Fortune’s difficult loads could take a whole day while they searched for likely carriers on a plot map of all the carriers in the US.

Operational Inefficiencies

Improving operational efficiency is one of the best ways for freight brokerages to save time and money, helping them grow their margins and increase their volume.

Tai’s Demand Generation marketing manager Lindsay Walsh stated that most companies they work with have between 11 and 20 integrations before they switch to Tai for their TMS provider. That means that it’s common for reps to spend a significant amount of time each day pulling up each system and signing in, then switching from one program to the next to get through their workload.

The Sioux Falls, SD-based Fortune Logistics was experiencing some major operational inefficiencies. While carrier reuse was important to them, it wasn’t simple for their reps to achieve outside of their Tier 1 and 2 carriers. They used PDFs sent back and forth to onboard new carriers and they had to use a plot map of every carrier in the country to cover loads outside of their current carrier network. These practices cost their reps time and made booking loads slower and more cumbersome.

Carrier Management Woes

At Concept Logistics, a Buffalo, NY-based freight brokerage, they kept carrier notes in physical notebooks. They didn’t have a way to track and store carrier preferences, and that meant they didn’t have a way to sort through their carriers easily to find the right carrier for a load.

Lack of a formal system for carrier management can make it difficult to keep track of carrier capacity, performance, and preferences.

Parade and Tai Can Help Brokerages Overcome Those Challenges

When they’re working together, Parade’s capacity management solution and Tai’s TMS create an end-to-end solution, managing the whole freight cycle from load request to delivery confirmation.

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Automation of Workflows

Automation is one of the best ways for freight brokerages to save time so they have more time to spend booking more loads, focusing on improving margins, and building better relationships with carriers. With Tai alone, the average customer books 30% more loads in their first year alone, so we know that the time saved through automated processes helps brokerages scale. When Tai customers add Parade, they can save even more time, potentially leading to even more loads booked.

“Once a shipment is added to the system, it can automatically trigger Parade to do outreach to the broker’s carrier network,”
said Sean McGillicuddy, Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Tai.

Fortune Logistics sought out the Parade/Tai combination for the automation. They’ve managed to automate many of their processes and been successful in getting digital bookings, allowing their reps to get more loads booked during their workday.

Carrier outreach to gather quotes is one of the most time-consuming parts of the day for freight brokerages using old-school processes. For Tai customers, that outreach is cut down to about three to five minutes, saving about 11 hours per week. When you integrate Parade and Tai, both the outreach and the inputting of quotes into the TMS are taken care of automatically. Load board postings and repostings, finding the best carrier for a load, inputting loads into the system, for customers using both systems, all these processes can be automated.

If you’re using the systems as intended, you should be able to cut half the talk time of your reps out,” said Greg Finnerty,
Vice President of Operations at Concept Logistics.

Simplifies Day-to-Day Operations

Automated workflows help simplify day-to-day operations, but there are even more ways that Parade and Tai make work simpler for brokerages. When Parade and Tai are integrated, reps never have to leave their Tai smart dashboard to reap the rewards of Parade’s capacity management.

Parade’s capacity recommendations can be viewed right in the Tai dashboard, ranked with the most likely carriers at the top and with the quotes received listed so that reps can easily sort through them. Brokerages can also set up automatic booking so that carriers can book loads digitally, saving time and effort on both ends.

Creates More Time for Meaningful Carrier Contacts and Booking More Loads

When processes are streamlined and busy work processes are automated, reps suddenly find themselves with a lot more time on their hands. That time can be spent getting more loads booked, being more intentional about the loads they book so they can improve margins, and communicating to

When Parade is built into Tai, brokerages can send loads for quote requests specifically to carriers who actually want the load. Rather than sending off an entire internal load board to carriers every day, brokerages can use Parade’s Smart Rules and carrier preferences to send only the loads that fit with what the carrier is willing to do so that the carrier doesn’t have to sort through loads that mean nothing to them. This more intentional contact leads to better relationships between brokerages and carriers.

Concept Logistics plans to use some of the time they save using automated processes to set up weekly carrier calls so they can stay on top of their carriers’ capacity and preferences and discuss loads run and any issues either side may have experienced. At Fortune, they were able to increase their bookings per rep per week by more than 50% in some instances.

Provides Visibility and Data

Automation can be kind of scary. Brokerages might wonder what’s going on behind the scenes to allow the systems to work as they do. In Tai’s activity log, customers can see the exact communication between Tai and Parade so there’s no mystery.

Parade and Tai both offer customers data and reporting so that they have the information they need to monitor progress and create strategic plans for the future. Plus, that data isn’t reserved for management. Reps can use data in Parade and Tai to track their performance and set goals for themselves.

“With the metrics that we use, that BPR (bookings per rep) and BPC (bookings per carrier), their bonus metrics are based on that so there’s financial opportunity because if you can book 30 loads today and book 50 loads next month, you’re financially compensated. It was a pretty easy buy-in,”

said Tyler Gilpin, Executive Regional Manager at Fortune Logistics when asked about how they achieved great buy-in from their staff.