Small Businesses Face Import Overhead

Freightos research sheds light on rampant inefficiencies within the global freight sector, trends impacting the growing import/export industry in the United States. While importing continues to grow across both small and enterprise companies, almost 50 percent of the 300,000+ American businesses that import still use spreadsheets to manage their international supply chain. Global trade is worth trillions, and U.S. Department of Commerce data reports a 6.7-percent year-on-year increase in U.S. imports in 2017—the fastest rate of growth in more than seven years; yet the industry remains siloed and outmoded.

Freightos conducted a survey to reveal how cumbersome logistics remains to American companies importing goods.

Key findings:

• 42.4 percent of business owners spend more than 2 hours (or an estimated $100 of labor) on managing each individual shipment.
• 10 percent of small business owners reported more than 75 percent of shipments arrive late.
• Only 11.7 percent of large importers feel their freight providers are technologically advanced.
• Of companies that import only four to 10 shipments yearly, almost half still spend more than $10,000 per month on international freight.

"Ask any freight forwarder or business owner, and they’ll agree—international freight, particularly for small and midsize businesses, is long overdue for an upgrade," says Dr. Zvi Schreiber, Freightos CEO and founder. "These survey results put real data to the all-too-frustrating obsolescence of the technology used to manage international shipments, and provide valuable insight into the motives behind the rapid growth in logistics technology investments."