The lane-level cost variance
your CFO cannot see today.
Logistics cost dashboard for manufacturers, FMCG and 3PLs. Lane-level freight, carrier mix, mode-shift, fuel surcharge and accessorial breakdown. Built on Microsoft Fabric. Most clients see 6–12% freight reduction in the first 12 months.
Trusted by manufacturing, FMCG, packaging and logistics operations across India, the GCC, Singapore, the UK and North America.
50+
Clients delivered
150+
Projects
14+
Years in industrial data
5
Markets
Who this is for
A logistics cost dashboard built around your role
Freight and cost-to-serve analytics for logistics, finance and supply-chain leaders — the cost view each one owns, mapped to the decision they have to make.
Logistics / Distribution Head
The problem
Freight cost lands as one month-end total. Which lane, which carrier and which customer drove the increase is buried across the TMS, the carrier portals and a procurement spreadsheet.
What we build
A logistics cost dashboard — cost per lane, per carrier and per customer — on a governed Microsoft Fabric model over your TMS, WMS and ERP, refreshed daily on Direct Lake.
Freight cost readable by lane, carrier and customer
CFO / Finance Controller
The problem
The freight line on the P&L moves and nobody can explain it before the board pack is due — accessorial and fuel-surcharge variance hides inside one number.
What we build
Cost-to-serve by customer and product line, with linehaul separated from accessorial and fuel surcharge, reconciled between TMS spend and ERP spend.
The freight number explained, not just reported
Supply Chain Director
The problem
Mode-mix and carrier-consolidation calls run on routine because the comparison sits across three systems, and the working capital tied up in transit is invisible until month-end.
What we build
Lane and mode analysis alongside in-transit value on one Power BI model, so the trade-off between cost, service and cash sits in a single view.
Mode and carrier decisions made on data, not habit
Operations Manager
The problem
Carrier invoices are reconciled by hand against rate cards kept in PDF. Overcharges surface weeks later, if at all, and the dispute window has usually closed.
What we build
Rate-card adherence auditing that checks every invoice line against the contracted rate on Microsoft Fabric, flagging overcharges while the dispute window is still open.
Invoice audit systematic, not sampled
The Problem
Patterns we see in every engagement
Carrier rate cards live in PDFs. Fuel surcharges live in carrier portals. Accessorials surface 60 days later in a credit-note dispute. The dashboard pulls all three into one Power BI workspace, refreshed daily.
Rate cards in PDF, not API.
Every carrier ships rate updates as a PDF. Your team maintains a spreadsheet trying to keep up. Invoice audit happens by hand, late, partially. The dashboard OCRs the rate card and audits every invoice line against the contracted rate.
Fuel surcharge formulas vary per carrier.
Each carrier has a different formula tied to a different fuel index updated at a different cadence. The CFO sees one fuel surcharge line. The variance per carrier hides for quarters. The dashboard models each formula explicitly.
Accessorials are the silent killer.
Detention, demurrage, peak season, residential delivery, tail lift, redelivery. Each carrier categorises them differently. Most operators run accessorial at 18–28% of linehaul. The best are at 8–12%. The gap is real money.
Mode mix decisions made on routine, not data.
A 3% shift from air to sea-air on the right lane pays for the engagement. But nobody runs the comparison because the data is across three systems and a procurement Excel.
What we build
What we build
Eight dashboards. Each one surfaces a specific cost lever your procurement and operations teams can act on.
Spend by carrier with concentration view
Replaces
The annual carrier review that does not show which carrier is taking the biggest share of which lane.
- Total spend, % of carrier mix, 13-week and 12-month trend
- Lane concentration — where one carrier holds >65% of volume despite alternatives
- Per-carrier reliability scorecard (DIFOT, on-time pickup) overlaid on spend
- RFQ readiness — auto-package by lane for the next carrier procurement round
Procurement leverage becomes visible. The next carrier RFQ has data, not narrative.
Spend by lane — cost per kg / pallet / container
Replaces
The 'we are competitive on freight' line that has no per-lane benchmark.
- Per origin-destination pair with cost per unit metric
- Variance vs internal benchmark and (where available) market benchmark
- Drill from lane to the specific shipments driving the cost
- Mode-shift recommendation where the same lane has cheaper viable alternative
Per-lane cost conversation becomes specific. Procurement targets the right lane first.
Linehaul vs accessorial breakdown
Replaces
The freight invoice line on the P&L that hides accessorial running 22% of linehaul.
- Per-shipment linehaul rate vs accessorials (detention, demurrage, fuel, peak, residential, tail lift)
- Accessorial as % of linehaul per carrier per lane — benchmark surfaces outliers
- Trend so accessorial drift surfaces before it becomes a recurring cost
- Drill to specific shipments where accessorial > 30% of linehaul for investigation
Accessorial cost becomes visible per carrier per lane. Negotiation has evidence.
Cost per unit delivered
Replaces
The freight cost number divided by total revenue that nobody can explain when it moves.
- Freight $ per case / per pallet / per container — by customer, by product line
- Customer-level shipping cost — surfaces the customers who are unprofitable on logistics
- Product-line shipping cost — informs pricing and pack-size decisions
- Per-region trend so geographic-mix shifts are visible separately
The CFO gets the number she actually wants. Sales gets per-customer logistics cost for next quarter.
Rate-card adherence audit
Replaces
The 'we audit the invoices' line that means the AP clerk checks the total but not the line items.
- Invoice $ vs contracted rate per shipment per line
- Auto-flag over-charges and accessorial that fall outside the contract
- Dispute pack auto-generated for AP — evidence per disputed line
- Carrier-level scorecard of invoice accuracy — basis for next contract negotiation
Invoice audit becomes systematic, not sampled. Dispute success rises.
In-transit value at risk
Replaces
The 'how much inventory is currently in transit' question that nobody can answer in real time.
- Total $ value of inventory currently in transit
- Working capital exposure with insurance coverage check
- Per-lane delay risk overlaid — high-value cargo on high-risk lanes flagged
- Forecast in-transit position 7 days ahead for cash forecast
Working capital tied up in transit becomes visible. Cash forecasting gets a missing input.
CO2 per delivery — ESG reporting layer
Replaces
The annual ESG report scramble where carbon-per-shipment gets estimated from carrier averages.
- Per-shipment CO2 using GLEC framework where carrier APIs do not expose it
- Per-lane, per-mode, per-carrier carbon intensity
- Mode-shift carbon impact alongside the cost-shift impact
- ESG report-ready data feed — annual report numbers reconcile to monthly dashboards
ESG reporting moves from annual estimate to monthly measured. The disclosure has evidence.
Business outcomes
What changes once the cost view is live
Freight and cost-to-serve savings depend on your carrier mix and lanes, so we show those as capability rather than a promised number. The cadence figures are the ones we commit to.
6 weeks
To first working cost dashboard
MDI standard cadence
40–60%
Fewer ad-hoc freight report requests
Governed model on Fabric
Freight cost broken down by lane, carrier and customer
Cost-to-serve per customer and product line, made visible
Every carrier invoice audited against the contracted rate
In-transit value and working-capital exposure on one view
How we work
From rate-card OCR to live cost view in 6 weeks
We start with the data. Most clients have rate cards in PDF, invoices in PDF and a spreadsheet trying to bridge them. We OCR the rate cards and audit the invoices first.
01
Discover — pull TMS, invoices, rate cards
Two weeks. Pull 6 months of TMS data, freight invoices and carrier rate cards. OCR the rate cards. Score data quality. Reconcile TMS spend vs ERP spend (these rarely match cleanly).
02
Prototype — one trade lane
Two weeks. Build the dashboard for one trade lane or one business unit. Validate against last quarter's actuals. Procurement and operations review together.
03
Deploy — all lanes, all carriers, audit workflow
Three to five weeks. All lanes, all carriers. Wire rate-card adherence audit and dispute-pack generator. Set monthly review cadence with procurement.
Technology stack
Lakehouse
Visualisation
Document AI
Pipelines
TMS & Visibility
Carrier APIs
Why MyData Insights
Why choose MDI for a logistics cost dashboard
Microsoft Fabric & Power BI specialists
We build only on the Microsoft stack — Fabric, Power BI, Azure Data Factory, Power Platform. Your IT team can support the logistics cost model without a niche freight-tech vendor in the middle.
Operations-first, not generic BI
We build freight and cost-to-serve analytics for manufacturers, FMCG and 3PLs — lane, carrier, accessorial, mode — not a generic spend dashboard relabelled after the fact.
We read the rate card, not just the invoice
Rate cards arrive as PDFs and carrier portals. We OCR them on Microsoft Fabric and audit every invoice line against the contracted rate, so overcharges surface inside the dispute window.
TMS, WMS and ERP under one model
TMS spend rarely reconciles to ERP spend cleanly. We land both in OneLake and reconcile them, so the freight number on the dashboard ties to the number in finance.
Senior practitioners only
The person who scopes your engagement builds the model. No junior hand-off, no learning exercise on your freight data.
First working output in six weeks
A working logistics cost dashboard on a fixed scope in six weeks — not a 50-slide roadmap to review.
Common questions
What buyers ask us
Our TMS reports already do this.
Most TMS cost reports are carrier-side and operational. They do not tie to ERP-side spend, they do not tie to inventory in-transit value, and they do not reconcile to the freight-payment system. The dashboard does all three.
Can you integrate Project44 / FourKites / GoComet ETA data?
Yes — we have integrated all three for in-transit visibility tiles. The cost layer sits underneath. If you have a real-time visibility provider we use it. If you do not, we use carrier EDI 214 messages.
Will this help us reduce freight cost?
The dashboard surfaces the targets — mode shifts, carrier consolidation, accessorial overcharge. The reduction comes from your procurement team acting on the data. Most clients see 6–12% freight reduction in the first 12 months. We will not promise more, and we will not promise less.
How accurate is the rate-card OCR?
92% on most carrier rate cards. Edge cases need manual reconciliation. We flag every below-95%-confidence extraction for human review.
How much does it cost?
We work in fixed-scope, fixed-fee phases — Discover, Prototype, Deploy — never open-ended time and materials. The fee for each phase is quoted precisely after Discover, once we have seen your TMS, your ERP and your carrier mix, because those are what actually move the number. What we commit to upfront is the timeline: first working output in 6 weeks, not a 50-slide roadmap. Book 30 minutes with Amit and you will leave with the shape of the engagement and what it takes to scope it.
Engagement
Free Logistics Cost Review
Thirty minutes with Amit on your actual freight spend — how it is tracked today, where cost-to-serve goes invisible, and what a governed model over your TMS and ERP would change. No slides, no obligation.
What you get
- A read of how your freight cost is tracked today
- Where cost-to-serve per customer is invisible
- A TMS, WMS and ERP data-readiness check
- A 6-week first-dashboard roadmap you keep
Ready to move
Book a 30-minute Logistics Cost diagnostic
30 minutes with Amit. No slides. No pitch deck. No obligation to proceed. We walk through your current TMS, freight invoice flow and the lane where the cost variance is biggest.