Intelligent Audit
The Data-Driven Route to Smart Shipping

Freight invoicing and the associated processes involved are complex and time-consuming. Shippers can easily get stuck in the weeds managing and processing freight bills. It is easy to be overwhelmed by a deluge of details within different carrier invoices crammed with complex charges, weight breakdowns, payment terms, freight rates, volume discounts, and much more. Imagine how difficult it is for shippers to drill down into the details to ensure accuracy! The data-driven route to smart shipping is a viable, accurate solution for managing freight invoicing complexities.

In fact, one out of every four freight bills contains some type of error, such as duplicates or inaccuracies in the rate, discounts, mileage, shipping weight, to name a few. Collectively, these can add up to millions of dollars in losses and hinder their ability to understand actual costs. In other words, these invoices can be a goldmine of savings for shippers, and a freight invoice audit is a way to realize savings when overcharges happen. Robust auditing capabilities ensure that all details of the invoice match what the carrier says it is, then validated against your contractual rates. To this end, shippers often rely on manual freight auditing, only to realize the process to be time-consuming, erroneous, and siloed, failing to unlock the actual savings out of invoices. This is where Intelligent Audit makes a difference. Founded in 1996, Intelligent Audit is a leading technology services company that automates the freight audit and recovery process. Today, the company helps more than 2,900 shippers across all industries experience increased carrier accountability, a better measurement of performance across the network, better management of the cost of goods sold, reduced confusion over total transportation spends, and increased insights into opportunities to lower freight spend.

Intelligent Audit offers a proprietary comprehensive freight audit and recovery solution that works across all modes of transportation. The solution integrates seamlessly with a shipper’s TMS and captures invoice data from parcel, courier, truckload, less-than-truckload air, intermodal, and ocean shipping modes. This data is checked against carrier contracts on over 150 points to recover opportunities regardless of the amount of the invoice. Automated processes then execute dispute submission and resolution tasks to drive significant savings for shippers, improve their bottom line, and return the savings to their customers. In addition, the proprietary technology leverages invoice data to identify opportunities for process improvement and potential cost savings that may otherwise remain undiscovered. These soft dollars contribute even more to the client's bottom line.

Going Beyond Freight Audit and Recovery

For over 25 years, Intelligent Audit has gathered and analyzed copious amounts of invoice data which provides actionable insights that help shippers confidently navigate logistics market volatilities, including increased rates and surcharges, sudden market disruptions, capacity constraints, and hub congestion difficulties.

Amid this turmoil that is further intensified by the uncertainty of the Covid-19 pandemic, shippers cannot risk any delays. Increasing customer demands requires shippers to find alternate ways to deliver shipments as promised. Intelligent Audit's business intelligence and analytics solution normalizes the invoice data to provide actionable insights that help shippers determine the best actions to ensure timely deliveries while controlling costs. In addition, Intelligent Audit’s customers monitor key performance indicators that affect logistics operations across different modes, channels, providers, and charges, all in one single pane of truth that provides unparalleled visibility and transparency through 750 standard reports. Using business intelligence and analytics solutions, shippers can make informed decisions when choosing the most optimal carrier with the best on-time performance and lowest costs. “We enable our customers to become smarter, more efficient shippers,” said Hannah Testani, CEO of Intelligent Audit. “We are to the shippers what Expedia is to travelers - flipping the informational asymmetry. Prior to Expedia, the common traveler was not aware of all available airline carriers and extra ‘hidden’ fees.”

You must be doing something right if you're the target. We are passionate about the continued evolution of our product

Whereas Excel and Tableau simply allow users to visualize aggregated data, Intelligent Audit’s solution audits the data first, followed by a vigorous cleaning and normalization process to offer actionable strategic insights across all modes and regions. Intelligent Audit customers can easily drill down into any aspect of their transportation spend. In addition, Intelligent Audit’s dedicated account managers collaborate with customers to identify opportunities for continuous improvement that control costs and drive efficiencies, such as hub injection strategies, downgrade opportunities, carrier utilization.

Driving Customer Success

CVS Pharmacy, Inc. sought to drive greater operational efficiency. The national retailer was struggling mightily due to antiquated manual processes and working without cleansed, accurate data. There was no way to accurately identify areas of improvement in its supply chain operations. CVS turned to Intelligent Audit for help.

Intelligent Audit captured data across all modes of transportation. Within two hours of receiving the data, Intelligent Audit offered actionable insights and strategic guidance on where and how to optimize the retailer’s transportation network.

CVS and Intelligent Audit collaboratively analyzed hundreds of "what if" scenarios to select the best options. CVS chose to optimize its footprint by moving a large proportion of its shipments from 2-day express to 1-day ground shipping. This resulted in significant gains in operational efficiency and substantial savings in shipping costs.

CVS is just one example of the success that can be achieved by enlisting Intelligent Audit and its data-driven technology approach. It is a model that works at the enterprise level as well as small to midsize companies. In 2020, the Intelligent Audit reported 70 percent growth with 980 million shipments audited and $24 billion of transportation spend. Today, they have 20 percent of the Fortune 50 and 2,900 plus customers across multiple industry sectors.

Standing Out from the Cloud

"I keep hearing about competitors trying to recreate our solution,” Hannah said. “It’s always slightly disheartening at first, but then you realize that you must be doing something right if you're the target everyone is aiming at. We continue to invest in our technology and our people, and we are passionate about the continued evolution of our product. "

What sets Intelligent Audit apart from competitors? For starters, they have better quality data and more of it, thanks to decades of innovation in their freight audit and recovery solution. That, and an unwavering commitment to provide the best technology and service to all customers. Their business intelligence offers more than 750 standard reports that are easily configurable to provide visibility to any desired level of detail. Intelligent Audit also takes great pride in having a highly efficient cross-functional team of account managers, support specialists, developers, and implementation strategists who have a combined experience of well over 1,000 years. They can just look at the data and make a story out of it to benefit shippers.

"We understand the actuality of what the opportunity is and have the expertise on how to achieve the savings," Hannah said. "That's why the people are important."

Intelligent Audit's continued focus is on technology, an area in which they invest heavily every year. Intelligent Audit is keen on continuing its investments into deep learning models, such as utilizing machine learning to help shippers detect patterns, acknowledge the data, and utilize it more efficiently. "This will give our customers more access to their data and allow them to model the scenarios quicker," Hannah said.