4,000 Reasons to Scale Up Your Business with Unlimited EDI
Historically speaking, one of the biggest business expenses for a freight broker is the cost of EDI. Traditionally, EDI is charged per character, significantly limiting the amount of business a broker can take on, ultimately hindering the business’ ability to scale up.
Before we go into more detail, and before we explain how unlimited EDI works, allow us to put your mind at ease: this won’t be a list of 4,000 reasons! Instead, we’ll look at one real-life scenario, which is all too common in the industry, and has the potential to save you $4,000 (or even-more-thousand dollars) each month.
Imagine that Joe Broker has one shipper that he’s working with. The shipper sends Joe lots of freight and requires lots of EDI updates. The company handling Joe’s EDI has had a near monopoly on freight EDI for years and charges its customers on a per-character basis. Naturally, the more freight that is sent, the more communication that is required - which means the more expensive the EDI.
Now, of course, “Joe Broker” is made up, but as many in the shipping game will be aware, the scenario is very much real.
In Joe’s case, his EDI bill was $4,000 per month, which was all from one shipping customer. This meant that it was basically unfeasible for Joe to take on new customers, as the exorbitant EDI bill would largely negate any potential revenue.
In fact, the real-life “Joe” - one of our customers - found himself having to turn EDI customers away just to stay profitable.
Until recently, brokers had little option but to accept this payment structure. Being EDI compliant meant dealing with the company that had a stranglehold over it for many years, and that was that. Until recently.
With the arrival of bitfreighter EDI, there was now a fairer, more affordable, and much more scalable solution. Rather than charging per character or per transaction, bitfreighter charges its customers on a per-shipper basis with unlimited communication included.
For Joe Broker, this meant that he could send as many messages as his shippers required without worrying that each message, or each character, would increase his monthly bill.
Joe’s monthly bill went from $4,000 down to $300. As a proportion, that’s less than 8% of his previous EDI bill! It meant that Joe could take on 12 other shipping customers, send them an unlimited number of messages, and still pay less than he was paying for EDI with his previous provider.
Now, this is just one example, and we know that every broker and every shipper is different. Some shippers may require less messaging than others. For others, this may vary depending on the size of the load, the duration, destination, or numerous other factors.
Most brokers save at least 50% of their usual EDI costs when they switch to bitfreighter’s unlimited messaging model. The actual saving may vary from shipper to shipper, or load to load, but being able to avoid the fluctuation in EDI costs by knowing exactly how much it will cost for each shipper is the key to being able to scale up your business.
