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Shippers now judge freight forwarders partly on technology. In a November 2024 survey, 90% of surveyed shippers rated technological capabilities as extremely or very important when evaluating and selecting a third-party logistics provider or freight forwarder. The three capabilities they asked for most were real-time shipment tracking, system integration, and automated documentation and compliance. Yet the same survey found that most forwarders have not digitized the bulk of their operations, which leaves small and mid-sized firms caught between customer expectations and the cost of changing how they work.
The practical answer is to invest first in technology that solves a problem customers have documented and that also reduces your own operating effort. Then keep personal service in the places where customers still value it. The rest of this article explains what the evidence shows, where it is thin, and how to make that choice.
What shippers are asking for
The survey, produced by the independent research firm Adelante SCM and released in 2025 with Magaya as sponsor, asked shippers which provider capabilities mattered. Three requests stood out:
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- Integration capabilities, meaning data that flows between the provider’s systems and the shipper’s own ERP, order management, or planning tools.
- Automated documentation and compliance, meaning commercial documents and compliance checks produced from shipment data rather than retyped by hand.
Adelante SCM CEO Adrian Gonzalez summarized the expectation this way: “Shippers are clear in their expectations: they want visibility, ease of use, and fast response times from their LSPs.” Those three words, visibility, ease of use, and speed, map closely onto the requested capabilities and give a useful checklist for any forwarder reviewing its own service.
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Where forwarders stand today
The same survey reported a clear gap on the supply side. Only 23% of surveyed freight forwarders said they had digitized more than 75% of their overall business processes or transactions, and fewer than 40% used a freight-forwarding management system. Those figures describe the survey sample and should not be read as an industry-wide count.
A respondent quoted in the Magaya release described the uneven picture: “we have some logistics partners who have best-in-class technology, while others lag behind with limited visibility and delays in messaging. We’re actively working to rid ourselves of the latter.” The speaker was not identified, so the comment reflects a single anonymous view rather than a finding about any named company.
A June 2024 Freightos survey points the same way from a different angle. It included 40 forwarders across large enterprises and smaller firms, and 90% of them reported using one or more technology solutions. Only 42% said they were satisfied with those tools, and the report noted that many tools remain siloed while manual processes persist. A sample of 40 mixed-size firms is useful context, but it cannot be used to estimate what small forwarders do.
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When the Adelante SCM survey asked forwarders why they would digitize, productivity and efficiency led by a wide margin. The reasons below are respondent selections, so they show priorities rather than measured results.
| Reason to digitize (freight forwarder respondents) | Share selecting it | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Improving productivity or efficiency | 84% | Adelante SCM, 2024 survey |
| Improving customer satisfaction | 62% | Adelante SCM, 2024 survey |
| Reducing operating costs | 59% | Adelante SCM, 2024 survey |
| Improving end-to-end visibility | 51% | Adelante SCM, 2024 survey |
The survey covered 71 qualified and verified freight forwarders and 3PLs. The question on digitization reasons had a base of 63 respondents, so the exact denominator matters when quoting it.
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Asked which AI applications they had implemented or planned for the coming year, respondents most often named freight pricing and quoting. Selections were not proof of completed deployment or return on investment. Some respondents also reported no current or planned AI use at all.
| AI application implemented or planned for the next year | Share selecting it | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Freight pricing and quoting | 39% | Adelante SCM, 2024 survey |
| Documentation automation | 33% | Adelante SCM, 2024 survey |
| Warehousing and inventory management | 31% | Adelante SCM, 2024 survey |
| Freight invoicing and billing | 30% | Adelante SCM, 2024 survey |
Two of these areas, pricing and documentation, connect directly to what shippers asked for. That overlap is the strongest argument for starting there.
Digital quoting in a relationship business
Freightos’ April 2025 online freight report found that half of the top forwarders in its survey offered instant online quoting, as did four of the five largest ocean carriers. The report describes digital sales as part of the customer journey in an industry that still runs largely on relationships.
For a small forwarder, this is an emerging pattern among larger players rather than a requirement. Instant quoting for standard lanes may win time-sensitive enquiries, while complex or high-value shipments still usually need a person who knows the account. Offering both is a reasonable model, provided the online quote is priced and governed by the same rules your team uses.
The wider AI picture
Forto’s 2025 Logistics Trend Compass, drawn from insights from more than 270 logistics, supply-chain, and purchasing professionals across Europe, found that 57% expected AI to significantly shape supply-chain management within five years. Only 12% reported wide-scale AI use today. Those figures describe European professionals in general, not freight forwarders alone, and they show a gap between expectation and deployment that is consistent with the survey data above.
Choosing technology an SME forwarder can justify
Tools differ in cost and difficulty, so evaluate each option against the same six questions.
1. Which documented shipper problem does it solve?
Map each candidate to one of the four pain points shippers named: visibility, integration, documentation and compliance, or response speed. A tool that does not clearly address one of them may still be useful internally, but it will not be easy to justify as a customer-facing investment.
2. Does it connect to your existing workflows?
Check whether the system exchanges data with the carriers you use, your customers’ systems, and your own accounting and operations tools. Manual re-keying between systems is the kind of siloed process the Freightos survey described, and it erodes the efficiency gains that justify the purchase.
3. What is the full cost of running it?
Count implementation time, data migration, training, integration work, and ongoing administration, not just the licence fee. Set those costs against the productivity and service gains you expect, and decide in advance what result would count as success.
4. Can your staff and your customers use it?
A tracking page nobody opens or a portal customers find confusing will not improve satisfaction. Test the workflow with a few real shipments before rolling it out to the whole team or to every account.
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5. Does self-service complement the personal relationship?
Customers can use digital tools for status checks and documents while still calling the account manager for exceptions, rate negotiation, or disruption handling. The question is whether automation frees your people for those higher-value conversations or replaces them.
6. How will you measure adoption and service results?
Track indicators you can measure yourself, such as the share of shipments with automated status updates, document turnaround time, enquiry response time, and the number of manual corrections per week. Review them against a baseline taken before the change, so you can tell whether the tool is working.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What the evidence does and does not show
The most directly relevant findings come from one survey, sponsored by Magaya and conducted by Adelante SCM in November 2024 and released in 2025. Its shipper and forwarder samples were drawn from qualified and verified respondents, but it does not break results out by company size, so it cannot tell you what a specific SME should expect. The Freightos figures come from a small mixed-size sample and a different definition of digital capability, and the Forto figures cover European professionals in general. These sources use different samples and definitions, so their percentages should not be combined into a single trend.
The evidence supports the direction of customer expectations and the reasons forwarders give for investing. It does not prove that any particular tool will keep or win customers, and it does not establish how quickly customer demand will move down to smaller firms. Treat the survey as a guide to priorities and test each investment against your own shipper feedback and operating data.
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Survey dates matter. The most detailed figures are from late 2024, and the market has moved since, so check whether newer data from the same sources is available before using these numbers in a business case.
The industry data is current as of 2025, and the adoption picture may have changed since then.
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A relevant note on survey wording: the 90% figure refers to shippers’ importance ratings in that survey, not to a measured effect on contract wins.
Use these findings as the starting point for a conversation with your own customers rather than as settled proof of demand.
Ultimately, the dilemma is a sequencing problem. Fix what customers ask for first, measure the result, and only then extend the technology into areas where your team and clients are ready for it.
Keep these points in mind when reviewing any vendor or internal project.
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