Autonomous Procurement for shippers

Shippers achieve measurable improvements across speed, cost, and efficiency: an average match time of just 2 hours, a 90% match success rate, up to 12% spot cost savings, and 80% of volume executed without planner involvement. Pfeifer Group achieved an 84% automation rate in spot assignment. These results compound over time as the AI learns carrier behavior and refines its profiling — improving match rates and reducing cost with every load processed.

The AI forecasts optimal spot rates based on market data, historical shipments, and carrier behavior — down to the individual carrier level. The Carrier Profiling and Personalisation capability learns each carrier's preferences, timing, and price sensitivity over time, tailoring offers that maximize acceptance probability and minimize delay. The system doesn't blast a generic rate to all carriers and wait — it sends the right offer to the right carrier at the right moment.

Match Now enables instant shipment assignment with one-click carrier acceptance — no negotiation required, no delay introduced. When the AI identifies a carrier whose profile and current availability align with a load at the proposed price, the carrier receives a targeted offer they can accept immediately. For planners, this eliminates the back-and-forth of traditional spot tendering. For carriers, it removes friction from accepting work they actually want — driving the 2-hour average match time

Load Bundling Optimisation automatically groups compatible shipments — multi-stop, continuous-move, or geographically proximate loads — to improve truck utilization and lower cost-per-load. Rather than treating every shipment as a standalone spot buy, the AI identifies bundling opportunities across the load pool and creates combined offers that are more attractive to carriers and cheaper for shippers. This is particularly impactful for shippers with high spot volume and fragmented load profiles.

Autonomous Procurement is designed for seamless TMS integration — enabling real-time load publishing, bid feedback, and assignment sync directly within existing transportation planning workflows. Planners don't need to adopt a new operational system; the AI layer sits on top of existing tools and automates the outreach and matching steps that currently consume manual time. This makes adoption fast and disruption minimal, while delivering automation benefits immediately.

Autonomous Quotation (AQ) is the carrier-side counterpart to Autonomous Procurement. Where Autonomous Procurement automates the shipper's offer process, AQ enables carriers to respond to and manage spot offers efficiently — with smart pricing suggestions and streamlined acceptance workflows. Together, they create a two-sided automated marketplace: shippers get fast, cost-optimized capacity coverage; carriers get predictable, well-priced loads that match their capacity and routes without manual negotiation overhead.

In traditional spot procurement, adding freight volume means adding headcount — planners manually processing more bids, calls, and awards. Autonomous Procurement breaks this constraint entirely: the AI scales with volume without additional labor. As spot volumes grow — seasonally, geographically, or through business expansion — the system absorbs the increase autonomously, while planners manage exceptions rather than every transaction. Dispatcher productivity increases by 20% annually as a result.

Three mechanisms work together to prevent spot overspend. AI-powered price prediction benchmarks optimal rates against market data and historical patterns, giving planners a data-driven guardrail. Dynamic strategy selection automatically chooses whether to use contracted rates or trigger AI-optimized spot offers per load — always selecting the most cost-effective channel. Carrier profiling then targets carriers most likely to accept at the optimal rate, rather than over-bidding to guarantee a fast match.

Autonomous Procurement includes advanced analytics and executive KPIs covering pricing trends, carrier performance, and procurement efficiency — designed for both operational teams and senior stakeholders. Leaders can track automation rates, match times, cost savings versus baseline, and carrier acceptance patterns over time. This turns spot procurement from an opaque, reactive function into a transparent, data-driven operation where performance is measurable and continuously improving.