DAT Freight & Analytics (DAT) has introduced DAT Broker Pulse, a subscription-based service for freight brokers that delivers direct access to market intelligence and benchmarking based on spot and contract freight transactions.

According to DAT, Broker Pulse gives freight brokers the ability to look beyond their own business metrics and evaluate contracts, carriers and costs against the broader market and their peers in an anonymous forum.

“This is an industry where financial and operational data is closely guarded, with broker visibility usually limited to their own operation,” said Mike Weaver, VP of sales at DAT. “Broker Pulse expands the scope, uniquely providing executives and senior managers with a bigger picture of company performance relative to their peers.”

Broker Pulse subscribers participate by contributing near real-time data from actual transactions on a regular cadence. DAT anonymizes this expansive dataset and applies advanced analytics and machine learning to generate common metrics that brokers can use for strategic business planning and more informed negotiations with shippers and carriers.

Broker Pulse features include:

• Benchmarking: Broker Pulse provides price and other transaction metrics by lane, carrier and geography as well as trends by mode, carrier and customer. Brokers can make an assessment of their own pricing, capacity, volumes and contracting processes relative to benchmarks from the industry and their peers.
• RateView: Broker Pulse leverages the power of RateView, DAT’s database of more than $110 billion in annual freight transactions. RateView gives brokers the latest rate information for thousands of broker-to-carrier spot and/or shipper-to-carrier contract market lanes, based on actual freight bills, not bids or factored rates.
• Executive dashboards: The Broker Pulse data-visualization platform offers company-specific, market-specific and customizable dashboard views. Brokers can access Broker Pulse data through cloud-based visualization.
• Easy integration: With no formatting or data manipulations required to participate, providing and receiving market updates is quick and simple. It reduces the time and resources spent translating data into meaningful reports.