Leading National Plastics Distributor Reaps Strong Rewards With FreightPOP's TMS Solution

• Functional Applications - Transportation Management Systems (TMS)

• Aerospace
• Plastics

• Logistics & Transportation

• Fleet Management
• Supply Chain Visibility

• Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services
• System Integration

At the height of the COVID pandemic, the customer, a major plastics distributor, was fulfilling incredible amounts of protective equipment orders, from countertop sneeze guards and student desk shields to face visors and medical intubation boxes. During this busy time, they reached out to several TMS providers as their solution was outbound LTL only. Their goal was to enhance their supply chain by gaining full visibility across all transportation modes—air, ocean, LTL, inbound, and outbound. The catalyst for the customer seeking out a new TMS solution was the need to view 100lb small pack (parcel) with LTL on the same screen when they shopped rates and booked shipments. Their former provider could not support this requirement, and they found that viewing LTL rates only defeated the purpose of searching rates to save money. They could not properly assess where it was less expensive to ship with limited information.

The customer is a major U.S. distributor of plastics for the airline and aerospace industries, with distribution and fabrication also offered in ceramics, laminates, composites, and specialty alloys. They were looking for a logistics management solution that could provide full visibility across all transportation modes—air, ocean, LTL, inbound, and outbound. The customer was also interested in a solution that could provide in-depth reporting insights and was capable of scaling to support their plans to develop and enhance their supply chain.

FreightPOP became a clear TMS solution for the customer. Their TMS was affordable and offered in-depth reporting insights. The customer also found FreightPOP extremely capable of scaling, supporting their plans to develop and enhance their supply chain. Beyond multimodal capabilities that provided the required visibility into the customer's supply chain, FreightPOP offered drill-down capabilities. To the delight of the customer's executive logistics team, FreightPOP's solution made it possible to drill down spending across multiple branches, right down to a specific product. The customer was being offered the possibility and advantage of savings by identifying true cost. Another offering from FreightPOP came in the form of improved internal communications. Due to the volume and urgency of PPE materials, interdepartmental visibility to customer order status was more time-critical than ever. The customer was experiencing bottlenecks between sales and their purchasing department. FreightPOP offers the ability for purchasing to set up pre-alerts connected to a PO number that allows sales to track when material hits the warehouse and when outbound orders will likely reach customers.

• Full supply chain visibility
• The ability to control rates on inbound products
• Greater control over inbound rates through the ability to use their own negotiated carrier rates

• Immediate savings in the thousands of dollars on TMS costs