The Logistics of Logistics Developing the Perfect Quote with Zeke Ziliak
Zeke Ziliak and Joe Lynch discuss developing the perfect quote. As Global Vice President, Transportation & Logistics Industries at PROS, Zeke, and his team help transportation and logistics companies develop fast and accurrate freight quotes using dynamic pricing.
About Zeke ZiliakZeke Ziliak is the Global Vice President, Transportation & Logistics Industries at PROS. At PROS, Zeke and his team provide science-based pricing strategies to transportation and logistics companies. Since Joining PROS 15 years ago, Zeke has held various positions of increasing responsibility. Positions include Senior Product Manager, Director of Business Development, and Executive Account Manager. Prior to joining PROS, Zeke was a music promoter and talent manager. Zeke began his career in corporate risk mitigation for an energy company. Zeke earned a Bachelor of Science, Biology/Chemistry from the University of Houston. Zeke attended UH as a National Merit Scholar on a full academic scholarship.
About PROSPROS (NYSE: PRO) provides AI-based solutions that power commerce in the digital economy. Using artificial intelligence, PROS accelerates customers' ability to embrace digital selling and eCommerce channels. With predictive and prescriptive guidance, companies are enabled to dynamically price, configure and sell their products and services across all channels with speed, precision, and consistency. PROS customers, who are leaders in their markets, benefit from decades of data science expertise infused into our industry solutions.
Key Takeaways – Developing the Perfect Quote- The perfect freight quote would have the following attributes:
- Available quickly, instantly if possible.
- Accurate, meaning a high probability of getting the desired outcome, which usually means winning the business. Note: Sometimes companies provide a quote even though they don't want the business. In this case, you want to be able to provide a quote that will be too high.
- Easily developed, ideally automated with an opportunity for human review.
- Most transportation and logistics companies are able to provide freight quotes much faster than just a few years ago due to increasingly good technology and access to freight data. However, the industry leaders are using dynamic pricing powered by artificial intelligence, which provide the best in class speed and accurracy that shippers now expect.
- By using dynamic pricing to develop freight quotes, transportation and logistics companies can achieve the following"
- Fast quote turn around time (QTAT)
- Accurrate freight quote that access historical and market data along with internal tribal knowledge.
- Balance of all the internal competing objectives. Inside logistics providers, the sales, operations, and finance groups may all have competing objectives (margin targets) that must be considered on the freight quote.
- Collaboration. In order to get the perfect quote, transportation providers must be able to collaborate with their carrier networks and partners.