The Fortune 50 general retailer, with nearly 50 supply chain facilities and 2,000 stores across the United States, was facing challenges in optimizing and innovating their freight operations across vendor to distribution center routes. The retailer was experiencing waves of canceled shipments due to a spike in freight demand in 2021. Many carriers were unable to fulfill the increasing volumes well above committed contract volumes, leading to increased volume hitting the spot market. This resulted in underperforming lanes that remained business critical, but drove up operating costs. Reliable capacity was needed to support peak retail seasons.

A multinational industrial goods company faced challenges in delivering supply chain products to their customers, often within 24 hours’ notice. The volume, timing, and destination of these products were often unpredictable. The company also had to retrieve the products from their customers’ locations and then dynamically route them to servicing centers, stocking locations, or other customers’ operations. Traditional RFPs were not suitable for their operations due to the unpredictable volume requirements and lane pairings. Turning to the spot market for thousands of loads was unsustainable in the long run, requiring immense administrative effort and cost.

H2rOse, a fast-growing beverage company based in Los Angeles, was facing challenges with their logistics and supply chain management. The company relies on key distributor and retail partners to deliver their products nationwide. One of the main performance metrics that suppliers must adhere to with these channel partners is on-time product delivery to distribution centers. However, with traditional LTL and PTL providers, delivery dates and times have low adherence rates or are simply not provided at the time of scheduling shipments. This situation left H2rOse dealing with a lot of uncertainties and gray areas in their operations where transparency, time specifications, and guarantees for delivery could make or break a relationship with channel partners. Delays or missed shipments would lead to hefty fees that could take weeks to resolve with many hours of manpower tied up in calls and emails working toward a resolution. With so much tied to specified delivery dates and on-time delivery, H2rOse was constantly balancing premium delivery costs with required shipment time frames.

Ergomotion was single sourcing their parcel shipping service with UPS. They used UPS’ powerful on-premise solution, UPS Worldship, to process orders as they were created and synchronized from their ERP. While this enabled Ergomotion to grow and scale their parcel operation, it also limited their productivity and ability to drive down costs. They were limited to only using UPS, regardless of how their customer concentration and order processing need changed over time. Ergomotion sought out a platform to reduce costs, increase efficiency and offer the flexibility they needed to support a growing, thriving operation.

POLYWOOD, a company that manufactures outdoor furniture from recycled materials, was experiencing rapid growth and needed a shipping solution that could scale with its expansion. The company was manually processing every order, which was a barrier to growth. The IT department was spending a significant amount of time supporting the team to ensure labels were printing out at the correct times and that user settings were accurate for the numerous systems they were using. POLYWOOD also needed a shipping solution that would integrate seamlessly with Acumatica, their ERP system, and sync order and shipment fulfillment data.

JL Marine Systems, a designer of industry-leading boat control technology, including the Power-Pole® shallow-water anchors, was facing major packing and shipping headaches that were affecting the company’s bottom line. With a catalog featuring hundreds of diverse products — some oddly shaped and large, some loose, others pre-packed — order shipping costs were often difficult to estimate upfront, which often resulted in dimensional discrepancies and price adjustments from carriers. This meant that JL Marine had to either absorb these costs or rebill their customers - neither a good option. In addition, JL Marine sells both directly to customers and through its network of 3,500 dealers around the world - which means the company receives a constant stream of unique orders — from single-item purchases to bulk orders of large, difficult-to-package items. With the manual processes they were using for packing and shipping, JL Marine was spending too many man-hours fulfilling orders and leaving margin on the table because they lacked the automation tools to accurately estimate costs. They needed an intelligent logistics solution that would provide real-time rates and packing optimization.

Everything But the House (EBTH) was looking to expand from a regional business to national coverage. However, their logistics solution was not equipped to support a national bidder base or the shipping needs of their diverse auction inventory. Their distribution process was manual, with many large auction items marked “local pickup only”. For the few items that could be shipped, EBTH relied on internal employees to call various carriers for quotes, and to pack and send the items themselves. Furthermore, there was no way to provide shoppers with accurate shipping rates during the bidding experience. This process excluded many potential bidders from participating in an auction, in turn limiting auction values and revenue. Scaling with their existing system would be slow and costly: each new market would mean more time on the phone, additional personnel, and uncertain costs.

Viyet was faced with the challenge of closing the gap between the price they quoted their customers for shipping and the amount they were ultimately billed by the provider. The company had no way to accurately pass along the cost of shipping to their customers. The process was very hands-on, manual, and time-consuming. Two team members were dedicated to organizing shipments, calling at least three different providers to ensure competitive pricing, and then handholding the shipment every step of the way. Viyet’s margin suffered on most orders because the company had no way to accurately pass along the cost of shipping to their customers.

Silver Oak Cellars, a California winery, was facing a significant challenge with its outdated freight calculation system. The manual system often resulted in incorrect shipping charges for customers. To maintain a positive customer experience, Silver Oak chose to absorb these incorrect costs, which was negatively impacting their bottom line. The manual calculation was difficult to maintain and the company was not recouping enough freight charges to cover what they were being charged by FedEx. As Silver Oak continued to grow, the lack of an automated API solution for rating was becoming a significant barrier to their ability to scale.

The customer, a government procurement and logistics contractor, was facing a number of challenges as the company was growing. They were unable to accurately assess shipping costs on a per-transaction basis, which was negatively impacting the customer experience due to inefficient tracking capabilities. Mislabeling shipments to military facilities could lead to substantial fines and potentially result in removal from military procurement programs. The absence of effective shipping management was negatively impacting the entire shipping process.

Sotheby’s Home (formerly Viyet) was faced with the challenge of closing the gap between the price they quoted their customers for shipping and the amount they were ultimately billed by the provider. The company had no way to accurately pass along the cost of shipping to their customers. The process was very hands-on, manual, and time-consuming. Two team members were dedicated to organizing shipments, calling at least three different providers to ensure competitive pricing, and handholding the shipment every step of the way. Sotheby’s Home margin suffered on most orders because the company had no way to accurately pass along the cost of shipping to their customers.

Hammer Nutrition, a health supplement provider, experienced a surge in orders due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Their previous shipping software, NetSuite Shipping, was unable to keep up with the increased demand, limiting the company to shipping only 300-400 orders per day. The company faced several challenges including slow order processing times due to heavy reliance on manual processes, inability to compare shipping rates, slow onboarding time for new workers, and lack of cartonization or packing optimization capabilities. These challenges were preventing the company from getting more orders out of the door quickly and accurately.

Maxima Racing Oils, a renowned brand in the power sports racing industry, was grappling with warehouse management and inventory visibility issues due to its legacy ERP and paper-based spreadsheets. The company's sales surged during the COVID-19 pandemic, exacerbating these issues and highlighting the need for more modern ERP and WMS solutions. Maxima's operation was riddled with pain points, including the inability to generate reports without the system freezing, lack of visibility into raw material stock levels, stock committed, and stock allocated, and no live correlation of raw material inventory needed for a work order to produce finished goods. Other issues included the lack of automatic creation of bills of lading (BOLs) and the error-prone, human-based system of cycling through the oldest inventory first for both raw materials and finished goods.

Kalalou, a leading designer and supplier of home accents, garden decor, and gifts, was facing challenges in managing its warehouse operations. The company delivers its products via three channels: wholesale to big home décor companies and brick-and-mortar boutiques and gift shops, direct-to-consumers via its eCommerce store, At West End, and drop-shipping for D2C customers. During the peak months of January and September through November, Kalalou brings on temporary workers to ensure they keep up with order demands. The company needed a solution that could provide visibility into auto-replenishment, improve the productivity of the warehouse team, and automate processes to reduce the learning curve for temporary workers.

Redcat Racing, a premier name for gas, nitro, and electric-powered remote-controlled (RC) cars, faced a significant challenge as it transitioned from a business-to-business operation to a direct-to-consumer eCommerce company. The company's pick, pack, and ship strategy was not equipped to handle a large number of small orders, leading to frequent shipping errors. The manual process of checking and packing orders often resulted in customers receiving incorrect or incomplete orders, damaging the company's reputation and causing financial losses. Additionally, the company's order processing times were negatively impacted by a lack of integration between their shipping software and NetSuite, leading to delays in loading shipping labels.

During the early days of COVID-19, with lockdowns, new work-from-home situations, and virtual school, demand for bikes had never been higher. For Retrospec, that meant orders increased rapidly, and its former pack and ship process just wasn’t going to cut it. Serving its network of almost 500 dealers as well as Amazon customers, Retrospec needed a streamlined and automated way to keep up with orders. The previous pack and ship process required multiple clicks and scans to process just one shipment, which translated into a lot of time and human resources to fulfill orders. Retrospec also wanted to be able to rely on an automated system to rate shop for shipping rather than a manual, people-intensive process. Most of their orders weren’t complex, in fact, 90% ship in their own containers, are pre-packed, and Retrospec already had the dimensions needed to rate shop, but when the orders would get to the pack table, they slowed down the entire process.

WrestlingMart, a large wrestling specialty store, was facing challenges with its shipping and fulfillment process. The company had already invested in scalable technology for its business, but it needed an advanced solution that could integrate with NetSuite without causing performance delays. The team was dealing with shipping errors that were costing them time and money. These errors included shipping incorrect products, selecting incorrect shipping times, and shipping with incorrect rates due to the lack of rate shopping functionality. The company wanted a solution that would be easy for employees to learn, provide customers with a better tracking experience, and quickly create business rules for choosing shipping options.

The customer, a global distributor of accessories for smoke shops, dispensary channels, and wholesale customers, had outgrown their previous shipping software which was built for small businesses. The absence of a streamlined shipping software meant spending time on manual steps that were driving up fulfillment times. Many of the customer’s products require domestic and Canadian HAZMAT labels, but there was no automated system for label generation. The team was forced to use a connector software to pass order data over to separate carrier platforms, all to generate a label. Scan-scan-print was no different - the team had been forced to jump between multiple systems which resulted in more wasted time. The customer needed a shipping solution that would address their expanding market presence, which was restricted due to the limitations of their previous shipping connector.