LoadProof Video Testimonial – Richard Hardin, Highline Warren

Right, so yeah thank you Richard, thank you for taking the time to join this call. Um, you know I’m P Shankar, I’m the principal of the company and you know the way we kind of see this is, you know, we build race cars but we don’t get to drive them, you know, you guys drive them, right? So, you know, it’s always a little bit of jealousy as well; you know you guys get to have all the fun. So, you know, that’s why this feedback is very important for us. I know, so if you could, you know please introduce yourself and, you know, the day-to-day activities that you deal with in your organization and we can get started there.

Yeah for sure, my name is Richard Harden, I’m a senior manager, DC Systems with Highline Warren. Okay, and you know, what do you guys do? You know, how is Load Proof coming into your day-to-day activity operations? Yeah, so we have a very large or different types of customers. We have lots of customers and we service everybody from a mom-and-pop. Well, let me back up, we’re in automotive aftermarket, so pretty much anything you see on like an AutoZone or O’Reilly floor.

Okay, or another way to look at it would be anything at the car dealership, so filters, motor oil, fluids, additives, anything like that. We either we’re a distributor of or we actually manufacture it ourselves. We have a couple of private label brands that we own. But all that being said, we’ve got a key group of customers that can pose a lot of challenges, just based on our agreement with them with their vendor compliance.

And all that being said is that really what that means in layman’s terms is that they ding us for every little mistake they make. It’s a revenue source, right? So, every time we make an error, that’s a deduction on the invoice. And so, we were, for lack of better words, getting taken advantage of. We definitely had some buttoning up to do on our side, definitely tons of opportunity to really look at our process and get better.

Yep, I run a warehouse when I’m not working on projects, and our focus is our retail customers—these bigger brick-and-mortar and e-commerce businesses. It was very apparent that we needed something to track and prove that we were meeting their compliance. We just needed a way to kind of essentially fight back, and that started with just taking photos with a tablet or phone and storing it on a shared drive.

Yep, that was a good first step for us, but we also needed a finished product, and saving a file or, you know, like a PNG file or whatever onto a shared drive was not user-friendly if we needed to go back and find that photo for some type of dispute or whatever. Yep, so we just started. Another coworker of mine had come across Load Proof. I don’t remember how he did and okay, we just started talking about it and started doing our due diligence and doing research.

Load Proof offered and was able to kind of check all the boxes of information we needed. Yep, and then from there, it kind of snowballed. We’re already looking at phase two and three of adding different customers to our program, using it in different areas of the warehouse, whether it be like a receiving thing or a Gable walk. Our manufacturing is going to be the next move for us; we’re going to put manufacturing on Load Proof. Great, they have similar challenges.

Great, but it just, once we did a little bit of research, it became very apparent that Load Proof was like a super easy and user-friendly tool. It didn’t require a lot of background work as far as shared drives and just system setups—all those challenges you have when you’re implementing some type of new software. Yeah, really it’s as simple as form as an app on a phone, and you know, you log in on a computer desktop.

Great, great, that’s typically what many of our customers go through: the legal retailer, you know, chargeback penalties, fines. Those were the biggest, that was the starting point for you guys. Great. You know, so how has Load Proof improved things for you guys? Right, you know, how was it before Load Proof, and how is it better now? You know, if you could please talk about that.

Hey, this has been a great coaching tool for me to go back to an employee and even just give employees praise. One of my DC managers was digging around looking for some other information and happened to see this load with four perfect pallets. The heavy product was on the bottom; there was no overhang, and the quality of the pallet itself was an A-grade pallet. It checked all the boxes and was good affirmation that we’re doing the right thing.

We have employees making the right steps to get it right. It’s been great for coaching and giving employees affirmation that their efforts are being noticed. It immediately improves customer satisfaction and relationships. Now, instead of fighting over who screwed up, we’re talking about how we can help each other do more business.

So how was the rollout experience in terms of getting the system installed, the app installed, and adapting to it? There’s always a change management piece when introducing something new. The process itself was super easy; it’s just an app on a tablet and a login on a desktop. We did a soft launch for about a month to make sure we weren’t missing anything obvious.

After that, we rolled it out first to the DCS, capturing information, and then to corporate user levels like customer service. A few weeks later, we rolled it out to our transportation team. Now we’re looking at the same thing for manufacturing, and we’re doing a soft launch on the return process. Returns are essentially the same as orders going out for us.

It sucks that we were getting these freight claims, but now I have photos of pallets when they left my dock and when they were returned—not in the same state. It tells the story of how it left and how it was returned. We’re about to update to your Platinum level because so many people want to use it, and we’ve seen good results in disputing claims with retail customers.

I’m excited to share it because it’s been easy to use. There’s not a lot of IT involvement; we’re still using your cloud for information. You can turn it on overnight if you want to buy the subscription. It’s a straightforward process, which was very attractive when we decided to move.

Would you recommend Load Proof to someone else in a similar role? For sure, 100%. I was talking to a friend at a brewery here in Memphis about their same pain points with carriers and customers. They want to use it for safety-related inspections and outbound orders. It’s great for various challenges in the food and beverage industry.

It can be applied to different operations; we want to use it for documenting new products from vendors. If we can add that to our item master and capture a photo, that would be nice. We’ve been using a tool for a long time, but it’s just a newer version now. It’s an easy tool to capture and store information without being overly complicated.

Is there anything else you want to add, or any enhancements we can do for you? I’d have to think about it. I spoke with one of your IT guys about updating our subscription. Our IT team created a sheet that prints out with all shipping documents and barcodes for capturing data efficiently, which reduces errors.

I was asking about customizing how information looks on the tablet, and I learned that it’s already possible. We often think of things after the fact, but it’s good to know those features are already there. We appreciate that you listen and incorporate feedback. I’ll keep in touch and let you know if we think of anything. Also, the Load Proof viewer is now available as a mobile app, making it easier to view and share photos. Thank you for the great partnership!