SIMIC

THERE has been a longstanding notion that artificial intelligence (AI) would enhance the efficiency of freight bill auditing and payment processes for shippers and freight brokers, reports New York's Journal of Commerce.

However, a confluence of factors in both the freight market and the AI landscape is compelling all stakeholders in the freight bill process to adopt such tools at an accelerated pace, according to industry experts.



Firstly, the steady increase in interest rates has heightened the importance of working capital, particularly for brokers and small to mid-size truckload carriers.



Unrealized receivables translate into significant interest costs, making a swift transition to AI-based tools crucial.



Secondly, the democratisation of the software market is empowering intermediaries and small shippers to leverage tools that enable them to operate more effectively.



This includes adopting freight payment and audit tools that sometimes displace existing relationships.



Thirdly, the emergence of chatGPT and other generative AI tools has brought the potential of AI into sharper focus for freight payers.



While these AI tools currently play a relatively modest role in powering freight auditing tools, they have heightened awareness of AI capabilities.



Denim vice president Sean Smith, a provider of factoring and freight audit and pay solutions for small to mid-sized truckload brokers, emphasised the fortuitous timing of the rise of large language models and openAI.



Denim utilises natural language processing (NLP), a branch of AI, to automate the auditing of freight bills. NLP facilitates data extraction from diverse unstructured documents, ranging from scanned PDFs or JPEG images to information embedded in email chains or WhatsApp threads.



While the technology itself is not new, Denim's growth in an underserved segment of the brokerage industry signals a broader acceptance of AI-powered tools, he said.



"We use the technology to manage risk and raise [net promoter score for small brokers] and service people no one else wanted to service," said Mr Smith.