Leading Vehicle Importer Transforms Freight Sourcing with Prodensus DataMate & RateMate

The Challenge 

As one of the largest vehicle importers and distributors operating across Ireland and the UK, the customer manages highly complex freight flows across major trade lanes from Asia to Europe. With annual freight spend in the 10’s of millions, the scale and strategic importance of logistics sourcing continued to grow. 

However, the team faced several challenges. Freight spend was fragmented across invoices, modes, and incumbents, with no formal freight pricing team in place to provide structured oversight. This made it difficult to gain a clear, validated view of true spend levels or identify improvement opportunities. 

At the same time, the customer’s incumbent providers were slow to adapt to the company’s changing commercial and service requirements. Manual processes and traditional bid analysis methods lacked the speed and accuracy needed to manage a highly complex, multimodal ocean network. 

Senior leadership recognised that optimisation was required to drive better outcomes. 

The business needed a solution that could quickly establish clarity on historic spend, run a formal RFQ at scale, and optimise award decisions while balancing cost with service performance. 

The Solution 

The customer partnered with Prodensus to bring structure, speed, and optimisation to their freight sourcing process - leveraging DataMate to audit and validate spend, and RateMate to orchestrate the RFQ end to end. 

Spend Audit and Validation with DataMate 

The first step was gaining a trusted view of freight spend. 

Using DataMate, the customer ingested their full history of freight invoices across Asia–Europe trade lanes. DataMate analysed invoice-level data to validate current spend, establish an accurate baseline, and identify where cost and service inefficiencies existed. 

This spend audit provided immediate clarity on: 

• True freight costs across modes and lanes 

• Variability in incumbent pricing 

• The scale of opportunity available through a competitive sourcing event 

For the first time, the organisation had a single, validated source of truth to support a formal market engagement. 

End-to-End RFQ Orchestration with RateMate 

With spend validated, the customer used RateMate to run a structured, multimodal ocean RFQ from start to finish. 

RateMate orchestrated the entire process: 

• Designing and launching the RFQ across complex trade lanes 

• Managing bids from all major global freight forwarders 

• Ensuring speed, accuracy, and consistency throughout execution 

Given the scale and complexity of the network, traditional tools would not have been capable of analysing outcomes effectively. RateMate enabled advanced optimisation across thousands of possible award scenarios, allowing the team to balance cost savings with service requirements. 

The final award scenario delivered optimal value - without compromising operational performance. 

The Results 

By combining spend intelligence with optimisation-driven sourcing, the customer achieved rapid, measurable results. 

Following the RFQ, the customer realised 13% in contracted freight savings on their annual spend. The selected outcome balanced competitive pricing with service reliability across key Asia–Europe trade lanes. 

Additionally they achieved ROI at speed. The return on investment exceeded 1500%, with value realised within the first month. The speed of insight and execution far surpassed what would have been possible using manual processes. 

DataMate ensured decisions were based on audited, validated data, while RateMate delivered a structured, repeatable sourcing process. Together, they provided leadership with confidence that outcomes were both commercially sound and operationally viable. 

With validated spend intelligence and an optimisation-led RFQ process now in place, the organisation is better positioned to respond to market volatility, evolving service requirements, and future growth across its logistics network. 

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To find out more about how DataMate or RateMate can save your business time and money, click the links or request a demo!