Poor Positional Logistics and Operations

There were a lot of problems with logistics and a continuous influx of problems.

  • There were poor positional logistics in 2 physical stores and 3 warehouses in Sydney, Adelaide and Brisbane.
  • There was no way to have a 360-degree view of freight or in other words one source of truth for freight.
  • Systems in the market did not match modern cloud technology or had very poor support.
  • They immediately needed a solution and they needed the solution to be implemented fast without any hidden costs, bells and whistles.
  • They wasted over 6 months working on an alternative system which failed with key learnings.
  • They could not continue shipping due to delays in restocking labels and carriers going down.

At this point, National Salon Supplies were urgently needing something to work. The most important thing was to change the original situation of their operations.

Multi-Carrier Bookings & Brokerage as a Service

It got to the point where National Salon Supplies were desperate for a solution.

We implemented our multi-carrier booking and brokerage as a service to give added flexibility to National Salon Supplies.

A cloud based solution was apt as it was easy to understand and required nothing more than a simple internet connection to work at the various warehouses.

We also implemented the ability for FreightExchange to alert operators in-case a carrier was down so they could inform their customers with better estimates.

Increased Problem-Solving Capacity

In short, it took some time to prove the real benefits but National Salon Supplies is really happy with where they’ve landed.

  • Due to the automated nature of bookings, the productivity of the operators increased there was more freight going out the door at the same time.
  • Over 5 mins saved per parcel arranging freight, which meant better quality of packing and accurate costings for freight/pick and pack process.
  • Having time saved in bookings allowed operators to be more thorough with logistics, and packing is more accurate and done well resulting in fewer product returns.
  • They were not necessarily freighting more parcels but they were left with fewer problems.
  • There is an over-efficiency gain of 40-50% for the logistics end.
  • Their business can now move with more accountability and more accuracy as before they had carriers who were never accountable and the costs were too much.
  • Having increased visibility enabled National Salon Supplies to identify issues with some of its processes and fix them.
  • Having Brokerage as a Service enabled the business to continue shipping and not worry about delays in restocking labels, carriers going down or not performing.

In short, costs were saved, the efficiency of the operations was improved and customer service was positively impacted due to increased tracking and monitoring.