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The Challenge
Sourcing Specialist Ocean Freight Without Enough External Reference
Newport manages ocean freight across many port-to-port combinations and specialist tank container requirements. Sourcing decisions are shaped by carrier reliability, equipment availability, customer commitments, and operational constraints — with price rarely the only driver. Some lanes are difficult to benchmark and carrier offers can be hard to validate, which meant the real risk wasn't just overpaying, but making allocation decisions without enough external reference where historical data was thin. Newport needed a sourcing process that gave the team stronger evidence behind those calls: when to accept, when to challenge, when to contract longer term, and when to stay flexible.
How Xeneta Helped
An Independent Market Reference Inside the Sourcing Workflow
For a large global ocean freight RFP, Newport paired Keelvar's sourcing workflow with Xeneta's market intelligence to build a more structured, transparent, market-backed sourcing process. Keelvar gave the team the structure to manage a complex sourcing event, compare scenarios, and deliver clearer supplier feedback across a large lane portfolio. Xeneta served as an independent market reference inside that workflow, helping validate carrier offers and back up supplier conversations with evidence rather than assumptions.
Newport's procurement team still applied the commercial and operational judgment throughout — the tools didn't replace that judgment, they gave it better inputs.
How It Works
Market Evidence Brought Directly Into the Sourcing Decision
As carrier bids came in through Keelvar, Newport's team checked each offer against Xeneta's market rates dataset for that lane, giving the group a shared, visual view of the key lanes, the carrier offer, and where it sat relative to the market — rather than a manual analysis explained after the fact.
That same market context fed into scenario planning within Keelvar, helping Newport compare how different allocation decisions stacked up against the market before final nominations were made. Where internal benchmark history was thin, the independent market reference gave the team a stronger basis for deciding whether to accept, challenge, or push for a different contract structure.
The approach has continued beyond the RFP itself, with Newport using Xeneta on an ongoing basis for lane monitoring and spot-versus-contract decisions as conditions change throughout the year.
The Results
A Sourcing Process That Could Hold Up in the Room
Combining Keelvar's sourcing workflow with Xeneta's market data freed up 200–250 hours during the RFP process, removing a significant amount of manual analysis from a large, complex global tender. Independent market data also gave Newport's team visibility across more than 90% of evaluated lanes, including lanes where internal history alone was limited.
Stronger Supplier Feedback and Negotiation Preparation
Market benchmarks gave Newport's team a stronger foundation for carrier conversations, replacing assumption-based negotiation with evidence-backed feedback.
A Stronger Move Toward Long-Term Contracts Where the Market Supported It
On Northeast Asia exports specifically, improved market visibility supported a stronger move toward 12-month contracts compared to the previous RFP — a decision made on better market evidence rather than simply moving more volume into the long term.
