CIFFA Forwarder Spring 2025

21 THE FORWARDER | SPRING 2025 Sustainability can provide new business opportunities for your forwarding business While all this talk of needing to meet shippers’ sustainability needs might sound daunting — and expensive — it’s important to recognise that when done correctly, sustainability can provide tangible business opportunities and create additional revenue centres for your freight forwarding business. Automated emissions measurements as standard Integrating automated emissions measurement into your customer portal as a standard part of your business offering can help you win new business and drive customer loyalty, resulting in increased revenue. It also greatly reduces the costs and time involved in getting accurate emissions measurements that shippers will soon be more regularly demanding. Here’s how you can support your clients with automated emissions measurement: • Enable clients to meet emissions disclosure requirements: For shippers that need to disclose their emissions to meet regulations, offering the ability to accurately measure and report their emissions data in a way that’s as frictionless and insightful as possible will set you apart from the competition. Additionally, you’re likely to see much less churn from current clients that need to meet these regulations if you show that you are already preparing for this requirement. • Help clients earn green credentials: By providing GLEC- accredited emissions reports, your clients can communicate their sustainability credentials on their website. Promoting your ability to help your clients achieve their sustainability goals and earn green credentials at the tender process can help you earn new business, tipping the scales in your favour • Improve client’s decision-making: Automated emissions measurement integrated into your systems can provide you with insights that can be used to improve routing decision-making by enabling you to factor emissions into your logistics services. You can use this data to identify the most energy-efficient routes and modes of transport for your clients based on their individual needs. What can you do now? By promoting automated emissions measurement as a standard part of your offering and highlighting its benefits at the quoting stage of your sales cycle, you’ll raise the value of your service when going to tender. This can give you that competitive edge you need to secure more tenders and increase revenue for your business. Support shippers’ long-term sustainability strategies Sustainability isn’t only about the quick wins when going to tender. Providing clients with accredited, granular and transparent data on their carbon footprint can help them to develop long-term sustainability strategies — and you should make sure you demonstrate this to prospective clients. This is a crucial element for modern business’s brand strategies as more and more consumers are purchasing climate-responsible products. Here’s just a few ways you can demonstrate your long-term value to clients through sustainability: • Developing emissions reduction targets: You can help your clients set targets based on hard, accredited data, enabling them to set ambitious yet achievable emissions reduction targets. With supply chain emissions accounting for up to 80% of the scope 3 emissions for many companies, reductions of any amount will go a long way in helping them achieve these targets. • Identifying emissions hotspots: Help your clients identify the areas of their supply chain that are generating the most emissions. This information can then be used to develop targeted interventions to reduce emissions, building a more sustainable supply chain over time that they can use to market themselves as a more sustainable brand. • Tracking progress and measuring impact: Tracking your clients’ progress towards their emissions reduction targets is an integral part of enabling their sustainability strategy. Offering automated emissions measurements on demand enables them to keep on track and promote the progress they’ve made at regular intervals, benefiting their brand reputation.