Medium22 of Gartner's Supply Chain Top 25 Run on Xeneta: Real-Time Freight Benchmarks Now Standard for Carrier Negotiations
22 of Gartner's Supply Chain Top 25 and Masters for 2026 run on Xeneta—Microsoft, Nestlé, The Coca-Cola Company among them. Tanguy Caillet, Xeneta's Chief Revenue Officer, reports that these leading teams enter freight procurement negotiations armed with current market rates, peer benchmarks and carrier-performance evidence—not relying on incumbent quotes or last year's price plus a percentage.
In a LinkedIn post, Caillet highlighted that most companies still negotiate blind, while elite teams close that gap using real-time ocean and air benchmarks, service-level visibility and AI-accelerated forecasts. 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. Independent freight benchmarks close the information gap between buyers who price off hope and those who enter negotiations knowing the market rate, peer performance and forecast trajectory before the carrier call.
A usable 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.
