Xeneta’s CRO Positions Real-Time Freight Benchmarks as a Standard for Carrier Negotiations
Xeneta Chief Revenue Officer Tanguy Caillet argues that leading supply-chain teams enter freight procurement negotiations with current market rates, peer benchmarks and carrier-performance evidence rather than relying only on incumbent quotes or prior-year pricing.
In a LinkedIn post connected to Gartner’s 2026 Supply Chain Top 25, he highlighted real-time ocean and air benchmarks, service-level visibility and forecasts as inputs for rate, surcharge and budget decisions. The post represents an executive market perspective and does not independently establish that every company shown uses Xeneta.
The affected decisions are carrier selection, target rates, surcharge acceptance, service-level trade-offs and freight-budget exposure. A usable freight benchmark must be normalized by lane, equipment, service, validity period, volume profile and accessorial charges, with clear timestamps and confidence ranges.
Procurement should own commercial use of the benchmark, transportation operations should validate carrier-performance data, and finance should validate budget assumptions. Failure modes include comparing unlike contracts, treating lagging market averages as executable rates, or using AI-generated forecasts without source traceability.
A lightweight implementation can support negotiation preparation through BI or spreadsheets. Scaling into TMS, procurement, APS or ERP workflows requires governed master data, approval rules, versioning and an auditable connection between benchmark evidence, carrier awards and realized freight cost.