Logistics Tech Outlook

Intelligent Audit
Reducing Transportation Costs Intelligently

Hannah Testani, COO, Intelligent AuditHannah Testani, COO
Exorbitant pricing and unexpected transportation costs incurred in the shipping process are a fact of life for today’s shippers. With an estimated 4.6 trillion dollars of revenue at stake, there is a growing need for more proactive solutions to offset the impact of rising transportation costs, as companies strive to satisfy customer demands for free shipping and quicker deliveries thanks to Amazon. Addressing these concerns, a leading supply-chain technology company, Intelligent Audit (IA) has brought into play the automation of the audit and recovery process and a focus on data analytics to reduce transportation costs.

The New Jersey-based company provides Freight Audit and Recovery, Business Intelligence Reporting, Network Optimization, Carrier Contract Negotiation, and several other value-added services focused on optimizing and managing transportation spend. These solutions help shippers achieve a higher level of control with better analytical capabilities. “We feel like it’s our job here at Intelligent Audit to drive down the cost above everything else,” states Hannah Testani, COO of IA.

With 22 years of experience and collective expertise of a well-trained team, IA is hands down a highly favored industry expert trusted by the likes of Microsoft, 1-800-Flowers, and GNC. “At our core, we are a technology company,” deems Testani. IA’s solution provides an extensive cloud-based reporting portal that can be tailored to customer requirements, department necessities or functions, rendering a more transparent model of a company’s transportation activity and spends. The system helps shippers streamline the analysis of mass amounts of data to provide actionable business intelligence reports which can then be used to identify cost savings and improve internal processes. With IA, clients get a global, all-mode transportation audit, visibility, and freight payment partner.


It provides its clients with a global, all-mode transportation audit, recovery, freight payment, and business intelligence reporting partner


Another distinctive feature that separates IA from competitors is its ability to track every shipment and provide clients with real-time visibility to exceptions and discrepancies via its cloud-based reporting portal. Transportation data can be leveraged to drive process improvements and can even be used to understand how delivery exceptions can affect customer retention. Most shippers are unaware that transportation data can be useful in driving increases in both the top and bottom line.

A recent case study shows how IA’s proprietary technology and network optimization capabilities served a primarily ground-mode shipper, based in Pennsylvania, by recommending a new distribution centre in the US. By examining the shipper’s data, IA identified Nevada as the optimal location for a new distribution centre which would result in five million dollars spends reduction. Additionally, IA analyzed all the shipper’s transportation spend and created a zone skipping strategy where the customer would send truckloads of product (4,000 boxes in one vehicle) to a carrier hub IA identified, three times a week. This provided them with “one-day footprint” for delivery, corresponding to the “Amazon effect” of delivering the products within the shortest scheduled time and significantly reduced their transportation spend. This resulted in the customer retaining consumers, along with gaining new ones for the faster delivery service.

“Our customers are very diverse in their technological capabilities,” continues Testani as IA proceeds to dispatch its solutions to shippers who are still struggling to understand their data and are unable to drive down costs. The company is also expanding its products across numerous verticals. The most exciting new project in the works is a plan to develop and leverage blockchain technology. IA believes this new technology will help standardize carrier invoicing and introduce a thorough, consistent way for all parties to better manage communication, visibility, invoicing, dispute resolution, and payments.

Deep Dive

Freight Audit Built for Faster Spend Decisions

Freight invoices now reflect far more than contracted line-haul rates. Accessorials shift, carrier rules change, fuel schedules reset, and routing decisions can alter cost before finance sees the invoice. At enterprise scale, small deviations disappear inside normal volume. A platform, therefore, has to do more than validate arithmetic. It must distinguish a bill that is technically correct from a spend that is unusual for the shipper’s own network, without forcing teams to review every exception by hand. Audit depth still matters because recovery starts with reliable invoice control. Buyers should look for systems that can ingest detailed carrier data across modes and test charges against negotiated terms at scale. Manual review becomes a weak link once shipment volumes rise or contracts vary by lane and service. The more useful platforms also preserve enough context around each exception to support resolution rather than producing a queue of unexplained flags. Finance teams need confidence in what is being paid, while transportation teams need to know why a charge surfaced. The harder buying question is what happens after conventional audit rules have done their job. Static controls can catch a rate mismatch, yet they may miss a sudden change in service use or a pattern that remains contract-compliant while pushing spend in the wrong direction. AI earns its place here when it learns normal shipping behavior and identifies deviations early enough to act. Explainability is equally important. An alert without the location and likely cause simply transfers the investigation burden back to staff. “Intelligent Audit’s audit platform combines normalized transportation data with DeepDetectAI, which learns shipping patterns and flags atypical activity for investigation.” Spend intelligence then becomes a test of decision speed rather than dashboard volume. Transportation data is often split across carrier feeds, internal systems, contract records and invoice histories. Executives should favor platforms that can connect those sources, normalize data, surface exceptions and let teams interrogate findings without waiting for a reporting cycle. Self-service analysis is most useful when it can expose cost-allocation problems or procurement mismatches while the underlying decision can still be changed. Faster access to normalized data can also sharpen bid timing by showing whether negotiated rates fit actual shipping behavior. Decision speed also depends on the contract context. Expiration dates, overlapping rates, surcharges and lane-specific terms can create spend leakage long before an invoice fails a formal audit. A credible platform should make those conditions visible early and tie them back to shipment patterns. Procurement alerts matter when they provide enough lead time to reassess lane economics against current volume, rather than merely reminding a team that a document is expiring. Human expertise still has a role when software surfaces a finding that needs carrier follow-up or a change in procurement practice. The point is not to replace judgment. It is to reserve judgment for the decisions that merit it. Intelligent Audit stands out as the premier choice for enterprises that want freight audit to extend into AI-led spend intelligence. Its audit platform combines normalized transportation data with DeepDetectAI, which learns shipping patterns and flags atypical activity for investigation. Contract Management 2.0 adds centralized agreement tracking and renewal alerts. Advanced reporting and analytics extends that analysis through real-time dashboards and ad hoc reporting. AI also makes transportation data easier to interrogate, while client success specialists help customers act on findings. For buyers trying to move from invoice recovery toward faster spend decisions, that combination is a strong fit. ...Read more
Top 10 Freight Management Companies - 2018

Company
Intelligent Audit

Management
Hannah Testani, COO

Description
Provides services focused on reducing transportation costs through automated audit and freight recovery, business intelligence, and contract negotiation solutions