Mastering your freight budget: Accurate forecasting in any market 

Striving for perfect accuracy in freight forecasting is unrealistic given the inherent uncertainties in the shipping industry.

Add in the fact that most businesses still require a 12-month budget forecast, and the job of the ops/supply chain manager doesn’t get any easier.

Fortunately, challenges around accurate budgeting are shared across the industry, and this has spurred a wave of innovation and adaptation, transforming the way shipping companies forecast and manage their freight budgets.

Organisations today can employ a combination of data analysis, predictive modeling, scenario planning, and ongoing monitoring and adjustment of forecasts based on evolving market conditions. This enables them to achieve a level of accuracy to make informed decisions, manage risks effectively, and meet the needs of their customers and stakeholders.

But even if you do everything ‘right’, the world might have other plans.

Take the beginning of 2024 for example.

Whilst Q4 2023 freight rates suggested a favourable 2024 for shippers, geopolitics and a drought in the Panama Canal towards the end of 2023 turned the market on its head. This saw carefully constructed budget forecasts abandoned, spot rates negotiated at inflated levels, and additional budget requested to recoup the financial impact caused by the Red Sea crisis.

Not only did this cause strained relationships with shareholders, suppliers, and customers, it has forced a notable number of organisations onto their back foot, with many still recovering from financial shock and others now looking to 2025 budget planning with more scepticism.

More than that, years of global events and market volatility have reduced the time between budget decision-making, accelerating the shift towards more frequent and dynamic freight budget forecasting.

With this in mind, there’s no better time to identify solutions to help accurately forecast freight budgets than right now.

Webinar: Mastering your freight budget: Accurate forecasting in any market  

Join Dayna Goldman, senior product marketing manager at Xeneta, and Thea Ruud, principal customer success manager & CS team lead EU at Xeneta, as they walk through two primary solutions to consider when forecasting during market disruption.

In 30 mins, you’ll gain insights around how to:

• Identify your market position (and why you should!)
• Accurately budget in the face of market disruptions.
• Proactively monitor and maintain your budget plan.
• Use freight intelligence to calculate scenarios specific to your business.
• Optimise freight budgets with indexing.

Watch on-demand here.

And because it’s on-demand, you’re invited to share with others in your team.

Your next steps:

In an industry as volatile and unpredictable as shipping, scenario planning and risk management are paramount.

As the webinar covers, this starts by identifying your market position, investing in a platform that enables you to align operations and proactively monitor and maintain your budget plan, and using freight intelligence to calculate scenarios specific to your supply chain – from sudden spikes in fuel prices to situational surcharges that could ripple through the market.

Fuelling this transformation is the relentless march of technology, community, and data.

For shippers, this can look like a freight intelligence platform that automates 450m contracted data points from +160k ocean port-port pairs & +58k airport-airport pairs, streamlines the budgeting process by aligning supply chain operations and improves communication among stakeholders to further enhance decision-making; enabling companies to adapt quickly to changing market conditions.

Xeneta promises you this, and more.

Want freight data and actionable insights?

If you’re interested in gaining access to market data that outlines opportunities and risks to your supply chain as they happen, book a live demo tailored to your most important trade lanes, budget goals and suppliers.

Book your demo today.

This article is sponsored by Xeneta – the shipping industry’s most accurate source of container and air freight rates