In the transportation business, the interaction with the customer does not start with the order for transportation (the forwarding order). It starts earlier when the customer inquires about a price for a specific transport. The system uses the forwarding quotation document to cater for this process. When the ordering party requests a price quotation from the Logistics Service Provider (LSP), the LSP creates a forwarding quotation document and enters the required information for the transport.
After entering all the transportation information, the LSP calculates the charges for the forwarding quotation. Optionally, the LSP can set a validity period for the quotation to guarantee the calculated price for the customer. The LSP can manually amend the calculated forwarding quotation price before sending it to the customer.
The LSP asks the customer to accept or reject the quotation within the defined validity period. If the customer accepts the offer, the system creates a forwarding order that takes the required information from the forwarding quotation.
If the customer interaction process includes quotations, the customer service agent manually creates the forwarding quotation and enters all required information. The system calculates the charges on the forwarding quotation based on the transportation charge management setup. The charge calculation methodology discussed later for the forwarding order works exactly the same for forwarding quotations.
Forwarding quotations use forwarding quotation types that are defined in Customizing. The Customizing for forwarding quotation types looks similar to the Customizing for forwarding order types, as you can assign item types to the forwarding quotation, and also assign transportation modes. The forwarding quotation type is defined in the forwarding order type to be used later.
It is not possible to start planning or freight unit building with a forwarding quotation as it is only a quotation. Once the customer accepts the quotation, the LSP creates a forwarding order from the forwarding quotation with a corresponding button in the forwarding quotation. After this, you can create freight units and start planning. The system takes the charges calculated and accepted by the customer from the forwarding quotation. The system disables the charge calculation if it was set up to run automatically on the forwarding order. It is possible to rerun the charge calculation in the forwarding order. This action overwrites the charges calculated for the forwarding quotation.
You may create forwarding quotation templates to facilitate the quick and easy creation of forwarding quotations and forwarding orders.
After creating a forwarding quotation from a template, the process discussed for forwarding quotations and forwarding orders begins.
You can assign forwarding quotations to forwarding orders retroactively. In some cases the customer places an order with an LSP without mentioning the forwarding quotation that was previously processed. In this case, the LSP can still go ahead and manually enter all of the information received on the phone into a newly created forwarding order instead of searching the system for the forwarding quotation while the customer is on the phone. After all of the information is entered and the call has ended, the LSP can try to locate the corresponding forwarding quotation, for example, by using worklists.
After finding the forwarding quotation, the LSP can retroactively assign the forwarding quotation to the forwarding order to represent the correct document flow. When retroactively assigning a forwarding quotation to the forwarding order, the system checks if the forwarding quotation can be assigned to the forwarding order (if the information in the quotation fits the order).
The forwarding quotation process can be differentiated according to two different scenarios. In the first scenario, the LSP runs the charge calculation in the forwarding quotation and submits the price to the customer who will accept or reject the offer. In the second scenario, the customer has already calculated a price that they are willing to pay. In most cases this is based on an agreement between the customer and the LSP. The customer then sends the transportation request together with the requested price to the LSP to ask whether the LSP is able to execute this transport at the provided price. The LSP does not need to run a charge calculation but they do need to decide whether they want to accept or reject the transportation. If the LSP accepts it, the system creates the forwarding order in the same way as the process involving the charge calculation.