In an increasingly technology-driven logistics landscape, independent freight forwarders are facing a critical challenge: keeping pace with evolving customer expectations. In this guest column, Parvinder Singh, Director, Hans Infomatic, explores how technology has become a basic requirement rather than a competitive advantage, why independent forwarders risk losing customers to larger players, and how digital transformation, automation and smarter operations can help them stay competitive.
Shippers now treat technology as the price of entry, and 2026 has shown what happens to forwarders who cannot meet it. The lesson for independent forwarders is not to out-spend the giants, but to out-run them.
It rarely happens in one phone call. A shipper that has trusted an independent forwarder for a decade issues a tender, asks for live tracking, instant quotes and a portal, and moves its lanes to a larger rival that offers all three on one screen. The relationship was good. The data was not.
The research says this is now routine. A survey reported by SupplyChainBrain in February found that 38% of shippers are only slightly satisfied, or not satisfied at all, with their forwarders’ technology. Only 45% of forwarders automate documentation, compliance and invoicing, and firms at the smaller end of the market are more than three times as likely as the largest to have no modernisation plans at all: 20% against 6%. Shippers, the authors conclude, no longer see technology as a differentiator but as a baseline.
Scale is not the same as service
Yet 2026 has also shown that size alone does not keep customers. DSV’s takeover of DB Schenker created the world’s largest forwarder. In October, Jyske Bank analyst Haider Anjum admitted the bank had underestimated the customer losses and falling volumes the integration has caused in European road freight, and cut its price target by nearly a quarter.
Customers who leave a merging giant go somewhere. They go to forwarders that can match the giant’s systems and beat it on attention. That is the opening for independent and mid-sized forwarders, but only for those that are ready.
The work customers never see
Speaking to The Loadstar in October, Sophia Huluta, president of GLC, made a point many independent forwarders miss. Customers now expect the same technology from them as from the largest players, yet the most valuable tools are often internal ones the customer never sees.
In Indian forwarding offices the gap is easy to spot. One shipment is keyed into a quote sheet, a booking system, a customs filing and an accounts package, by four people, four times. Every re-key is a delay and a chance of error. Live tracking means little when the data behind it is wrong.
What an independent forwarder can do now
- Put every shipment on one record, from enquiry to payment, so data is entered once.
- Let software do the routine work, reading documents, checking filings and watching cut-offs, with a person approving each step.
- Quote in minutes, and send milestone updates before the customer asks.
- Treat the next tender as already announced.
The giants are learning that digital scale without service loses customers. Independent forwarders can learn the reverse lesson faster, and in 2026 the accounts are moving to whoever learns it first.
Parvinder Singh is Director of Hans Infomatic, which has built logistics software since 2002. Its AI-native freight management platform, OrbisOne, launches at IICS Mumbai on 2–4 December 2026.
