cargo.one’s extensive airline portfolio enables PJN Logistics to book 80% of their shipments with one preferred platform

Ease of use, faster time-to-quote, and dedicated customer support led Sweden-based and WFN member PJN Logistics to select cargo.one as their only digital platform.

“We are very happy with cargo.one. It’s so easy to use, it saves us a lot of time, and our customers receive competitive quotes within minutes rather than hours or days. Speed gives us an advantage, and we get that with cargo.one.” — Peter Johansson, Founder at PJN Logistics & Consulting AB

Challenges

• Simplify operations to improve time-to-quote and win more business

Since PJN’s founding in 2014, Peter has weathered the challenges and frustrations of a pre-digital bookings landscape. Back then, airlines insisted that forwarders use their websites for direct bookings, resulting in a laborious and time-consuming process of searching and comparing routes and rates for Peter and his compact team of four. 

“Before digital platforms like cargo.one, airlines wanted us to book via their own portals. It's okay if you only have a couple of shipments per day, but if you have many shipments and need to check five different airline websites for rates and communicate that to your client - it takes just too much time.”

The difficulties amplified during the Covid-19 era, described by Peter as a "whole new world." The pandemic brought about constant changes in rates, routes, and information, escalating the volume of information required from clients. The email exchanges between PJN, airlines, and clients surged, reaching as many as "200 emails per day." 

A digital pioneer, trusting cargo.one since 2020

PJN, one of cargo.one’s first customers in Sweden, has been booking their airfreight on the platform since 2020. Peter was immediately drawn to the platform's “clean interface, ease of use, and self-explanatory nature", which remain standout features for him today. According to Peter, the user-friendly interface simplified their process of comparing rates and preparing customer quotes.

This process improvement, however, is only beneficial as long as the rates procured are accurate. According to Peter, “It’s super important that the quality of the offers is high, so you can trust that you will be able to book what you quoted and that your shipment will fly according to the booking confirmation.” Offer quality has always been at the core of cargo.one’s platform and Peter has found that he and his team can consistently rely upon it:

“cargo.one has been great in terms of offer quality. Even when quoting dynamic rates, which by nature are subject to change, we find that 9 out of 10 times we can book the rate we quoted.”

Small details deliver a great speed advantage to win more business

However, access to competitive and reliable rates is not always enough for freight forwarders to win business. “It’s a combination,” clarifies Peter, “of course, you must have pretty good rates, but speed is maybe the most important factor.”

"In the airfreight business, it’s critical to give customers rates very fast because time is money. If we can send the quote to the customer in just a few minutes, we have a big advantage that can make us win more business."

And speed is the main superpower PJN gains from cargo.one: "From a single screen, I could now search and compare options, often seeing 5 choices or more. cargo.one saves us time–it makes it so much easier for us,” says Peter.

It’s not, however, the ability to compare multiple airlines in one place–after all, several other tools can also provide that value. For Peter, the proverbial devil is, rather, in the detail. He notes that "cargo.one is the only platform I know where you can bookmark rates. That's really good because usually, we don't have the booking in the first instance; we must send the quotation, and depending on the customer, maybe they will accept it one or two days later. With cargo.one, once they accept, we don’t have to search for the original rate again. We just retrieve it from cargo.one’s Bookmarks and place the booking within seconds.”

Another small feature that Peter loves is the ability to copy and paste flight details with just a click, which allows his team to save precious seconds every time they quote a customer. In the end, cargo.one’s user-centric interface and time-saving details combine to allow PJN to reduce its time-to-quote by up to 90%, a substantial improvement.

“With cargo.one we can provide customers with a quote in less than 10 minutes, instead of the 30 minutes, two hours, or even more that it used to take us in the past.” 

A growing airline portfolio allows PJN to centralize air cargo booking

After having to initially rely upon a number of platforms, cargo.one’s growing airline portfolio – 12 new carriers added in 2023 alone for a total of over 50 airline partners – has finally allowed PJN to simplify and centralize its booking operations, cutting excess tools. 

“When I joined cargo.one initially, I think only Lufthansa and Finnair were available. Although the platform was great then, it just had a few airlines. Now cargo.one has grown so much, with many airlines being added this year. That’s really important for us – as a result, we’ve gone from running 20% of our business on cargo.one to 80%, and we don’t use other tools.”

The remaining 20%, unfortunately, still has to be dealt with offline. “Sometimes we must work in the old way,” says Peter, “Especially when shipping to China, some airlines haven’t become digital yet, so you must get rates via email. Or for some special cargo. But, like I said, 80% can be done via cargo.one and that’s a big improvement for us.”

Ease of use and customer support set cargo.one apart from alternatives

When compared to other platforms, Peter is delighted with cargo.one’s usability and appreciates the lack of need for training, which can set forwarders back time and time again as they bring in new employees to their team. “Other platforms are not as clean or easy to use; cargo.one really is quite self-explanatory, and you don’t need any training. That’s very important.”

Having worked with other tools in the past, Peter acknowledges the strengths of each, but he finds the cargo.one platform to be the best fit for small and medium-sized businesses. 

“Other tools are too complicated for us. A lot of functionality we don’t need and difficult to use. The advantage of cargo.one is how simple it is, just very clean and easy to work with.”

A further differentiating factor for Peter is the personalized support he receives from the team at cargo.one. With cargo.one PJN has got a partner, says Peter, and this is best exemplified by the relationship he has built with his dedicated account manager Jakob Mård, whom he’s been working with from day one in 2020.

“Jakob has learned a lot about my business, and we have a great relationship. This is so different from the other tools we previously used and it’s been of great value for us, especially at the beginning. We are very happy with the team at cargo.one”

With cargo.one as its digital booking partner, PJN Logistics has everything it needs to unlock maximum value from its digital booking, well into the future.