By Tim Valdez, senior vice president, factor leader at TriumphPay
The trucking industry is moving at a pace faster than most could have imagined a little over a decade ago. This has given way to an arms race of sorts, as companies push for the latest in FreightTech to gain an advantage in the ever-changing market.
The competitive nature of this industry has greatly compressed margins. Factors wanting a competitive edge are looking internally at the back office to maximize efficiency, but playing this game isn’t easy for everyone. Adopting FreightTech isn’t exactly cheap — and building your own … well, good luck.
The digital age has inadvertently created a technology split between the haves and the have-nots. To keep up, factors are left with two options: Bring more people into the back office or pay the price to streamline their operations.
That was until a third option came along: TriumphPay.
TriumphPay is an affordable payments solution that connects brokers, shippers, factors and carriers through automated processes. Using the latest payment processing technology, TriumphPay helps process and manage carrier payments at unprecedented levels of speed and accuracy.
Small and midsize factoring companies are able to achieve a competitive advantage, which many previously thought was impossible without millions of dollars of investment.
Here are four reasons why factors of all sizes are turning to TriumphPay:
Risk mitigation
Factors want to advance money as quickly as possible, in a manner that makes sense to avoid undue risk. They’ve always been motivated by a sense of urgency, but more so now than in years past. It wasn’t that long ago that carriers would wait up to two days for funds. In today’s digital age, carriers’ expectations have only grown more exorbitant as that window has shrunk to just a few hours.
Through it all, one thing has remained constant: Business is booming, as 50%-60% of loads brokers assign to carriers are being factored. With so much at stake, it’s only a matter of time before your manual processes deliver a costly error.
That’s why adopting automation technologies is one of the most valuable risk mitigation strategies one can implement today. TriumphPay’s secure file transfer integrations ensure the safe transfer of data between enterprises. Back-office people can be precise but sometimes not timely, and when time constrained, people can make errors.
The ability to verify the carrier, load amounts, delivery status and other aspects of each transaction gives the factor confidence to fund carriers quickly without human intervention.
Operational efficiencies
Nothing slows productivity more than menial tasks, especially when they grow exponentially. No hardworking company wants to hear that it’s wasting time and money, but that’s exactly the case for many factors.
The once tried-and-true methods of phone calls and emails to gather information are no longer effective in the digital age.
Thankfully automation technology has done away with many back-office processes that used to weigh companies down with stacks of documents. TriumphPay’s frictionless auditing solution makes it easy for carriers to send invoices to factors without the hassle of having to manually process and subsequently send documents to brokers, eliminating the need to make phone calls or send untimely emails for payment.
Factors that partner with TriumphPay can expect near real-time integration with their broker debtors, which in turn equips brokers to focus on revenue-producing activities instead of answering phone calls and emails from factors. In tight capacity environments like we’re experiencing today, it greatly benefits brokers to facilitate a factor’s process through network automation.
Improved visibility
Improved visibility not only helps factors make better purchasing decisions but also draws attention to and settles problems when they arise. The ability to review performance metrics on each transaction allows for any load or payment issue to be quickly addressed, helping settle disputes not just with the broker but with carriers as well. This ensures that small issues stay small instead of growing to the point where relationships sour.
Payment solutions at a fraction of the cost
I’ve been involved with a couple of startups in my 26 years in the industry. What I’ve learned is that without making multimillion-dollar investments, it’s nearly impossible to compete with institutional factors as a midsize factor.
We chose to sell our company in 2019 because we couldn’t justify spending millions of dollars building out technology that would be just a one-off solution for the broker community, something that would have to be replicated every few years or so just to stay competitive. Despite my best efforts, the truth is that we never would have been able to garner the same level of attention as the industry’s leading factors or received the priority to build out the solution with brokers due to the lack of development resources.
If TriumphPay existed at the time, we would never have sold our company. Where small to midsize factoring companies like my own lacked the capital and technical resources to build out new technologies, TriumphPay provides payment solutions at a fraction of the cost to all constituents.
TriumphPay’s TMS integrations, along with its 500-plus broker relationships, give factors and brokers a boost in this hyper-competitive industry. When it comes to building technology solutions, leave the heavy lifting to TriumphPay, trucking’s trusted payments network.
