George Kontoravdis, President To say that globalization has impacted the transportation industry is an understatement. As exponential volumes of goods get transported around the world, more freight bills are generated and the waiting time for enterprises to get their freight shipment validated has only increased. Moreover, the paper-based filing of documents and invoices often leads to inaccurate filings, duplicate billings, and erroneous charges. Against this background, the inaccuracy of invoices becomes a concern, and oftentimes enterprises end up pondering where their transportation dollars are going.
Even though freight auditing has existed for a while, there is still a need for a freight bill processing system that provides 100 percent accuracy in a timely manner. Fortigo spearheads the freight market with a new-age, robust freight auditing technology that reviews invoices on a daily basis to identify inaccurate charges, matches shipments with orders, and eliminates duplicate invoices.
“Our freight auditing processes are built from the ground up to support any kind of invoice processing cycle of an enterprise,” says George Kontoravdis, president of Fortigo. The company audits electronic data interchange (EDI) and non-EDI invoices, carrier contracts, and other documents to eliminate data flaws.
Fortigo offers freight auditing to enterprises through their web portal with the options of XML, CSV, EDI, and Excel integration. The portal matches the carrier contracts with those of the client to figure out the charges that are included in the invoices and provides an easy solution to integrate invoice data with shipments that are already in the system. Fortigo’s freight auditing solution enables enterprises to audit shipments quickly and efficiently by creating specific search criteria and data fields. This feature can be leveraged to best analyze the invoices for proof of delivery and identify any deviation from the specified criteria.
Our freight payment systems help customers process the billing, find an alternative carrier solution as per requirements, and assist in creating optimal contract terms
Fortigo has also introduced a SaaS-based transportation management system (TMS) that brings automation and performance optimization to an enterprise’s shipping process. “Our TMS captures all the shipment data and makes it easier for the freight auditing system to audit bills swiftly, creating a unified solution for all customer needs,” states Kontoravdis.
The auditing solution can be customized according to the client’s requirements. Fortigo leverages off-the-shelf data analytics software to help customers gain a complete understanding of their transportation expenditure. To provide maximum benefits, Fortigo integrates its auditing solution with the client's accounting system. “We help customers process bills with our freight payment system, find an alternative carrier solution as per requirements, and create optimal contract terms,” explains Kontoravdis. Given the globalization factor, Fortigo adds value to its solution by helping clients process invoices and payments in multiple foreign currencies.
Large enterprises with multi-million dollars annual transportation spend have an extended web of carriers using different modes of transport and services such as air freight, motor, ocean, and others. Fortigo’s integration with its customers’ carriers and their freight invoicing provides an insight in optimizing the carrier network, removing extraneous freight charges and sometimes eliminating unnecessary usage of carriers and/or their services. In one instance, Fortigo helped a large enterprise client that was employing 120 carriers bring down the number to 60, which helped the client save a considerable amount of transportation expenditure.
Beyond its customer base of manufacturers and retailer, Fortigo partners with more than 75 percent of the domestic airline industry and continues to expand its services in the space. As part of its short-term plans, Fortigo is expanding and improving its existing mobile offering and is actively researching freight audit and expenditure review solutions on mobile devices.
