Every year, shippers sit across from carriers and negotiate rates. The carriers bring scorecards. The shippers bring data from their own lanes.
Neither side has the full picture.
Carriers now reject one in six contracted loads. Those rejections don’t show up neatly in your TMS. You see what carriers do on your freight. They know exactly how they perform across the market. They just have no incentive to tell you, and a vague scorecard is all they provide.
This is the procurement gap. And it doesn’t get smaller just because you’ve run this process for decades.
What is Freight Procurement Analytics?
Freight Procurement Analytics gives shippers market-wide visibility into carrier rates and performance. It includes market rate intelligence, smart carrier matching, in-platform mini bid tools, carrier performance analytics, and the AI Freight Procurement Agent. All draw on real network data, not carrier-reported performance.
project44 observes 1.5 billion shipments a year across 267,000 carriers. Freight Procurement Analytics draws on that network to benchmark each of your contracted lanes against real carrier performance: not what carriers report, but what they actually do.
Most TMS data is self-contained. You see your tender acceptance rate, your on-time performance, and your carrier scorecards. But you have no view into how a carrier performs across the broader market and how defensible the ETAs in your TMS are.
Freight Procurement Analytics closes that gap. In it, you access market rate intelligence, carrier performance across the full network, and your own lane data, all in one place.
The problem with how annual contract negotiations are run today
Annual contract season follows a rhythm most transportation teams know well. For most shippers, rate surveys go out in Q3. Market benchmarks get pulled. Carriers submit bids. Teams evaluate, negotiate, and lock in contracts for the following year.
The process isn’t broken. The inputs are.
Traditional TMS data shows you what carriers do on your freight. Your performance data stops at your own lanes. Every negotiation starts from an incomplete picture, which means you’re making multimillion-dollar carrier commitments based on partial information.
Transportation management system for carrier selection and rate negotiation
A modern TMS connects carrier selection directly to market-wide performance data. Freight Procurement Analytics gives shippers that data. The AI Freight Procurement Agent, a feature within Freight Procurement Analytics automates the monitoring and acts on it. The Agent surfaces procurement risks, launches mini-bids, and negotiates contracts without waiting for your team to go looking.
Freight Procurement Analytics is part of project44’s Intelligent TMS. It is available as part of the full iTMS suite or as a standalone layer that can be used with Oracle, SAP, Blue Yonder, or any other TMS. Freight Procurement Analytics gives shippers a complete picture of their carrier network: market rate intelligence, smart carrier matching, in-platform mini bid tools, and carrier performance analytics.
Within Freight Procurement Analytics, the AI Freight Procurement Agent adds an automated monitoring layer. Instead of requiring your team to pull reports and identify gaps manually, the Agent monitors every lane continuously in the background. It surfaces four categories of procurement risk automatically:
- Expiring contracts: lanes where coverage is about to lapse
- Above-market lanes: contracted rates that exceed current benchmarks
- Underperforming carriers: poor on-time delivery
- Uncovered lanes: gaps where no contracted carrier exists
When a lane warrants action, the Agent launches the mini-bid. Your team reviews and confirms. You don’t go looking for the savings or service improvement opportunity. The Agent brings it to you.
When you purchase Freight Procurement Analytics, the AI Freight Procurement Agent is included.
The numbers
Shippers using Freight Procurement Analytics see 4% lower freight costs, 17% better on-time performance, and 60% less manual work in quoting.
The 60% reduction in manual quoting work is the one most teams don’t anticipate. It’s not just about better rates going into the negotiation. It’s about what your team stops doing: the spreadsheet reconciliation, the ad hoc analysis, the internal requests that precede every carrier conversation. When the intelligence surfaces automatically, that time goes somewhere else.
From annual negotiations to ongoing procurement discipline
Annual contract season is a moment to reset. The contracts you sign in Q4 will govern most of your spend for the next twelve months. Getting that right matters.
But procurement doesn’t have to wait for contract season. The AI Freight Procurement Agent monitors every lane year-round: flagging an above-market rate the second it exceeds thresholds, surfacing a coverage gap before it becomes a service failure, and negotiating contracts autonomously.
The shippers who negotiate against what carriers actually do across the market will start winning contracts differently. And with the Agent running in the background between negotiations, the advantage compounds.
Frequently asked questions
What is Freight Procurement Analytics?
Freight Procurement Analytics is a product within project44’s Intelligent TMS that gives shippers market-wide visibility into carrier rates and performance. It includes market rate intelligence, smart carrier matching, in-platform mini bid tools, carrier performance analytics, and the AI Freight Procurement Agent. Freight Procurement Analytics draws on 1.5 billion annual shipments across 267,000 carriers. Shippers see what carriers do across the full network, not just on their own lanes.
What is the AI Freight Procurement Agent, and how is it different from Freight Procurement Analytics?
Freight Procurement Analytics is the product. The AI Freight Procurement Agent is a feature within it. The Agent monitors every lane continuously in the background and automatically surfaces four categories of procurement risk: expiring contracts, above-market lanes, underperforming carriers, and lanes without a contract. When a lane warrants action, the Agent launches a mini-bid and negotiates the contract autonomously. The human reviews and approves. If you buy Freight Procurement Analytics, the AI Freight Procurement Agent is included.
Does Freight Procurement Analytics work with my existing TMS?
Yes. Freight Procurement Analytics is available as a standalone product that works alongside Oracle, SAP TM, Blue Yonder, e2open, Manhattan ActiveTransportation, and other transportation management systems. You do not need to replace your existing TMS to use it. The intelligence layer sits on top of your current setup, giving you market-wide carrier rate and performance data without disrupting the workflows your team already runs.
How can a transportation management system help with carrier rate negotiation?
A modern transportation management system connects carrier selection to live market data, showing not just how a carrier performed on your lanes, but how they perform across the market. Freight Procurement Analytics lets shippers benchmark every lane against current market rates and real carrier performance before entering negotiations. The result is leverage built on verified data, not on what carriers choose to report.
Which transportation management system can automate mini-bids and contract negotiation?
project44’s Intelligent TMS includes the AI Freight Procurement Agent, which monitors lanes automatically, surfaces procurement risks, and launches mini-bids when action is warranted. The human approves; the Agent does the work. This operates continuously in the background, not just at contract season.
What is an AI agent for carrier procurement and tendering?
An AI procurement agent monitors freight lanes continuously, tracking carrier performance, contract expiration dates, rate benchmarks, and coverage gaps. It flags opportunities and risks automatically and launches mini-bids when a lane warrants action. project44’s AI Freight Procurement Agent is part of Freight Procurement Analytics and draws on 1.5 billion annual shipments across 267,000 carriers.
How long does it take to implement a transportation management system?
project44’s Intelligent TMS is designed to deploy in 3 to 6 months. This is significantly faster than legacy TMS implementations that can take 12 to 18 months. Shippers can start with Freight Procurement Analytics and expand from there, rather than committing to a full implementation upfront. Freight Procurement Analytics is available as a standalone product and integrates with your existing TMS.
What TMS capabilities support annual freight contract negotiations?
The most valuable TMS capabilities for contract season are: lane-level rate benchmarking against current market data, carrier performance analytics across the full network, contract expiration tracking, and automated surfacing of underperforming or uncovered lanes. Freight Procurement Analytics provides all of these, with the AI Freight Procurement Agent handling continuous monitoring and mini-bid execution between negotiation cycles.
