LoadProof Video Testimonial – Orlando Martine

I don’t have the serial number. We can go back and send them the pictures from load proof. Yes, the serial number was attached to the shipment, and they can see the details in the numbers.

Now that I took the pictures, I would park, hit the arrow, and go over here. We’re shipping, and you can choose which customer you would like. In this case, it would be Invinco, our ship ID 971. Who is picking the order? Brittany. The number of boxes, in this case, is the big shipment, so I’ll put 200. The number of pallets I’ll estimate around 25.

When we put it in park load, we can go back and make any changes if I have 20 pallets instead of 25. I haven’t done anything in our system with IFS, so in this case, I would hit the arrow. You have an option to either upload or park load. If you’re done with the shipment, you can upload it, and it’ll send it to our little upload cloud.

Park load will give me an option to go back and finish processing our shipment and fill out once it’s prepped. You can go back and take more pictures. To go back into the file with a park load, you just tap it, and it takes you back to the option of taking more pictures.

For example, how the machine is going to relate this pallet with the sense order or with the invoice or the packing sleeve and everything is important. When I go back and take the finished product pictures, this paper will take pictures of the freight shipment. We take pictures of any detail. If the customer adds anything, we take a picture of it.

That will eliminate confusion because you already took the picture at this moment for the bill of lading, packing slips, and everything. But don’t we use dark stuff for other processes too? No, we can eliminate it. The invoice is going to go in the electronic way also, and we can attach it to the same file.

This is an improvement because if a customer asks, “Hey, what about my shipments?” they can go to that address, and Orlando can provide proof. If they give one of us a ship ID or any related information, we can send them the attachment, and it will pull up only that shipment.

The number one question every day is, “Where is my shipment?” The sales reps can log in, share that information, and they just need to put in the email address of the customer. They can ask, “What is my material?” or check on price changes, but the first question is usually about status.

This also benefits us because if it gets damaged during transit, you can provide proof. If it gets damaged, you can send the pictures to the freight carrier, like FedEx, and say, “Hey, this is how it left my dock.” This is where load proof is actually a really good benefit.

We take pictures from beginning to end, even for small partials. If it’s five pieces of screws, we take pictures of those five pieces in the box and the label. If the customer comes back and says, “Hey, here’s the picture, the five screws were in it,” we can reach out to the carrier for transit.

Do you have a policy or procedure where the customer confirms upon receiving the pallet? Yes, we tell them about the pallets, pieces, and product description, along with total weight. Our business differs because we are a contract manufacturer, so we can only put labels on the boxes that our customers allow us to.

We have to be ultra careful because we’re sending it to their customers. If they get a call from their customer, we get in trouble if we don’t do things right. This is why documenting what we’re shipping out to meet our customer’s specifications is crucial.

In my case, I try to avoid different situations with customers. For example, if I keep putting one pallet here and another there, and for the carrier, it looks like only one pallet, they may say they received only eight when my bill of lading says my pallet.

We start fighting about it, and if someone takes a box in the middle, they sign that everything is good, but later claim they’re missing two boxes. That’s exactly where we run into issues.

This situation has driven us to use load proof, and it has been beneficial in multiple occasions. We’ve improved our packaging and have taken pictures to back up our claims when customers say they are missing parts or claim damages.

We even sometimes get calls from customers saying, “Hey, we didn’t receive this,” and with load proof, we can present evidence of what was shipped and the condition it left in. It’s crucial for us to maintain credibility with our customers.

When we missed putting a box on a pallet, we could show that the box wasn’t there. This helps us fix our process and shortens the investigation cycle, proving that if it’s our fault, we’ll make it right.

At the end of the loading process, we take the last picture and say this is the sixth pallet. Many customers take photos at the time of staging, and once they’ve loaded, they document everything from full to sealed.

They use this information to go back to the freight carrier and demonstrate how it was loaded onto the truck. In our case, we ensure that all packing lists are included to avoid issues during transit.

One major issue is shipping without a packing list. We ship with it, but it can get lost during transit. With load proof, we can show our customers there is a packing list, and we also have a lot inside the shipment.

How can we link the sales order with the invoice and bill of lading? The carrier will send the invoice, and we need to ensure everything is linked. For every shipment, we take pictures of the sales order, invoice, packing slip, and bill of lading to have everything documented.

This customer is thermal, so we create the bill of lading, and in most cases, they create a ship ID. The planner for this customer creates the pick list of what units they want for that day.

We go in and we pick the serial numbers or whatever product they want to ship that day. When it’s closed, somebody queues it. Okay, here’s our PCC. This is thermo; we have 40 pieces. Then it’s broken down like who picked this shipment. Did someone go back and see it? They initial it, and then you stop the process. This customer, we create the BO right here. You’ll put the four pallets with the 40 pieces—that’s one of your bulletproof.

It can go up to three. If one of my guys picks it, he’ll put his initials right here. Then he will check the serial numbers, and everything is okay, like the correct quantity. Then me or one of the other guys will go in and say, okay, yes, you do have 40 pieces, and yes, you do have four pallets total. The second person would put their initials here. The packing then goes into IFS to create each shipment per pallet. You’ll put the serial number; if it’s a single unit, you would test that serial number.

That way, in IFS, they can say, okay, all these parts are on this pallet. Then you have three single pallets with different serial numbers attached. Once the IFF process is complete, we go back and prep per customer because each customer is different. The person who picked it would say, okay, I did close this shipment. I do have the packing list, which these don’t have yet, but I can show you one.

At this international stage, the customs invoices and performance are attached; it’s either a yes or no question. Then you’ll stop again. This is the transport process, making sure you did everything from top to bottom. Your load proof is done, and then whoever created the BOL checks the address. You can match everything in our ERP system to ensure every achievement has a bill of lading with the correct address, how many pieces, the pallet, and everything—it’s rapid 100.

Before uploading into LoadProof, there’s an option. I believe Nikolai set it up how we wanted it for shipment. When you’re done taking pictures, you can go back because we take pictures of the BOL, the packing slip, and any extra product. We take pictures from top to bottom.

In this case, we’ll pick the customer, so you can make a list of all your customers. If you have an invoice number or we go by ship ID, that’s what you would put in this area. I need to be careful because I have not known how many customers we have—about 15, but we also have a lot of different side addresses. One customer is asking for us, which is good.

When you have the bill of lading and all these documents, they can be linked with the invoice in the cloud. Everything’s in the cloud; we haven’t integrated our ERP system yet, but it’s connected to the invoice made in the ERP. LoadProof is not integrated with ERP Edge, but you can go to the LoadProof portal and see all this information by putting in the invoice number.

Now, we’ll start taking pictures and have all the necessary documents completed electronically. Our terms with our customers are ex-works for the majority, so as soon as it’s packed and ready for pickup, we’re invoicing. For how long have you been using LoadProof? For almost a year now. How different was your day-to-day? I prefer it because it covers us if anything goes wrong.

It saves us from potential money situations or if anything gets lost. I can reach out and say, hey, I’m looking for these shipments. There was a time I had to send it to a freight carrier, and they said, “Oh, it’s in the hub out there in the yard.” The biggest thing for us is peace of mind that we’ve got proof that Brittany’s team did it the way it was supposed to be done, and we could share that with the customer.

It eliminates arguments. For me, the biggest thing is I don’t want to bicker back and forth; I want to talk about growing your business. We need to solve issues, so I make sure I’ve got proof we did this properly. That eliminates issues; Crystal can attach to it, Patrick can attest to it. We were dealing with a problem at least once a week, sometimes one a day.

It squashes those issues out, and it takes one or two extra minutes to do something right the first time, where it takes days or weeks to solve a problem. That’s a complete waste of time and puts your image at risk. We should have invoices of reconciliation from 2019-2021; we need to clean everything or we are just wasting time, and it’s big money.

We’re talking about years of unpaid invoices. When customers come in, the one guy who has the loudest voice says, “Scanfield does this wrong every time.” We show them LoadProof, and they ask why someone is complaining. I have shipments all the way back to September 2021, and I can show them the evidence. It’s great for customer relations; people start to believe in you and trust you, and that’s huge.

In our business, we have three important windows. The salespeople have good relations with customers, but the second most important window is the warehouse. The presentation of what they receive matters. If the customers are pleased, they will recommend us. The supply chain also matters; we need the correct mix of products from Mexico, Colombia, and Venezuela to the United States.

You’ve got the same exposure shipping to an installation site. A lot of our goods go to the installer, which isn’t the customer, but a third party. We know how it left our facility, but we can’t control it beyond that. Yesterday, one of the questions was about a $13,000 shipment.

The customer told us that the subcontractor in the job site said he never saw the pallet. We said no, we have proof from the carrier, and eventually, they agreed because we showed the evidence. Bottom line: this is a no-brainer. The only recommendation is to ensure you have a good Wi-Fi connection because sometimes the connection isn’t the best.

I’m the main supervisor here, and they are under my login. We have about 12-13 active users, mobile devices everywhere. We’re processing maybe 30 pallets a day, while I’m doing about 200-300 pallets on the other side. We build 150,000 cameras a month, and we’ve started documenting more of that through this tool as well.

We also use it in receiving; if there’s shipping damage, they can take pictures immediately to document the issue. It helps with our quality inspection too, allowing us to see how much is damaged. It gives traceability from incoming to outgoing shipments. Brittany mentioned a psychological process that comes with documenting your work.

If I’m documenting my work knowing it could be accessed by my boss, it better be right. This perception has helped us increase quality significantly. Before LoadProof, we had issues with damage and accountability. Now, we can access everything.

If we have issues, the program manager can say, “Hey, they have this issue, but they already have the LoadProof information.” That’s in your hands, and you can continue with your other tasks. Thank you for sharing your firsthand experience; it’s awesome.