Freight Agency Services

Requirement to procure the services of a supplier to provide a 4PL service facilitating an optimisation of the entire supply chain for UoE - from courier services for UK domestic, to import and export shipments. Must include a software solution which ideally will be able to integrate with UoE’s Oracle Fusion “People and Money” system and also comply with our “No PO No Pay” protocol.

There is a significant level of fragmented spend with couriers from various colleges and schools at UoE. The new service will enable spend to be centralised through one service.

The appointed freight agent would act on UoE’s behalf as a 4PL logistics supplier and be responsible for sourcing multiple transit options and providers for each consignment. This would involve a software solution for UoE staff to book consignments on.

All communication, billing and responsibility for delivering the service will reside with the supplier. This would provide 2 overarching benefits to UoE: (1) Improved freight rates; one provider understanding our requirement will be able to be active in the freight market in the most advantageous way for UoE.

Truly centralising the requirement will avoid UoE being subject to high one-off freight rates. (2) Improved processes; a single stream of invoices and customs clearance instruction documents will simplify the paperwork process between stores, procurement operations and P&M system.

Centralisation of the function will create efficiencies with existing teams and allow time to be redeployed into more effective areas to improve value streams elsewhere. As well as financial benefits this solution should make it easier to group together sustainability goals in freight which has traditionally had a high carbon cost.