Spot Bid Auto Tender

cwarner · #1 (**permalink**) November 9th, 2007, 16:56

By default in OTM 5.5, Spot bids work as follows. I choose to use a spot bid on a shipment, and choose what carriers I want to notify. I set the time at which the spot bid will expire. I then send out the notifications and wait for responses. When the spot bid expires, OTM will automatically tender the shipment to the carrier with the lowest bid. I see three problems with that.

1. What if I don't want the system to just auto tender out the load?
2. What if the cheapest bid is a ridiculous rate? (Note this is only an issue if 1 is true)
3. The rates that are submitted are not compared against the existing rate records for truckers. How do I know I'm not overpaying?

I submitted a SR on parts 1 and 2 and I was told that these will be incorporated into CU5 so that you will be able to turn off the auto tender process, and set a maximum cost. I have put a workaround in place in our system, that is easy and I thought that some other people might appreciate it. We have already setup an agent in our system to put out spot bids, and that is set to a two hour window for all tenders. So we setup a milestone that will fire a few minutes prior to the expiration of the spot bid and withdraw the spot bid. It also notifies our traffic department that they need to review the submitted bids. That way we can see what people submitted and tender out the load if it was done for an acceptable rate

Does anyone have suggestions for part 3?

bmj_23 · #2 (**permalink**) November 11th, 2007, 12:57

Hi - what service provider / rate are you using to rate the shipment in the first place ? Is that the lowest cost service provider ?

cwarner · #3 (**permalink**) December 3rd, 2007, 16:55

Yes, currently the service providers are only rated by lowest cost.

bob_romijn · #4 (**permalink**) December 4th, 2007, 08:13

Hi,

Do you have only 1 order on a shipment? In that case you can most likely do somehting with "Best Buy rate" in the order release. If that is run you get the cheapest rate possible for shipping this order. You have to get it via SQL in you ragent because that will be on shipment.

Just an idea.

Best regards,

Bob

cwarner · #5 (**permalink**) December 4th, 2007, 13:09

No, we typically have multiple order releases on each shipment This issue is only a problem at the end of a spot bid. Basically I have responses to my request for spot bids and I also have existing rate records, but how do I know that I'm not overpaying the trucker who is responding to my spot bid?