LoadProof Video Testimonial – Max Yi, Pharmavite

this is what I say I mean it’s you know we make race cars but we don’t get to raise them you know you guys raise them you know so so I’m always you know excited to hear you know what what I mean.

One is how is the race you know how is it you know I I hope you feel like you’re winning.

One two is you know what can we do better to you know make your life even more easier right right.

I was just telling part that I appreciate the fact that you guys are doing these um 360b calls and wish that more of our vendor Partners would do that.

I think we’re gonna just give Max a minute or two okay um Let me let me ping him.

I think he was in another meeting but let me just check on his progress here okay.

Great yeah it looks like he was in in the previous meeting okay so where are you based of Tracy?

Uh I’m in LA county oh okay California.

California is it is it uh San Bernardino or is it more you know San Diego um you know Ontario you guys?

Yeah it’s it’s further north um so we’re worth we’re north of about 30 miles north of San Fernando Valley.

Okay okay is not is that near Bakersfield by any chance?

It is south of Bakersfield South of Bakersfield okay.

I’ve spent some time I spent I think couple of weeks in Bakersfield I’ve spent a week in you know San Bernardino.

Um you know I mean obviously La you know I mean that was when we got married we came to LA and then drove from LA to San Francisco what is that through Route One PC H.

Oh nice beautiful.

I’ve lived in California on and off um and uh I have not made that trip yet up the highway one from from Southern to Northern.

Yeah yeah yeah yeah I’ I’ve been on pieces and it’s just it’s gorgeous.

I I used to live in Northern California outside of San Francisco kind of the Sacramento area.

Yeah and then I then I lived in moved to North Carolina for 17 years okay been back been back for five years in Southern California.

Okay and I’m I’m loving it so I’m now discovering Southern California.

Your summers are not as humid as um it been when you were in North Carolina not at all yeah.

Yeah yeah yeah and where were you in North Carolina?

I’ve spent a lot of time there too especially in the Charlotte Greensboro you know Winston Salem area.

I I lived right between Charlotte and Greensboro in a little town called Salsbury.

Sorry what is the name?

Salsbury.

Sal Salsbury okay.

I used to drive from you know I will fly into Charlotte and then I’ll drive to Winston Salem you know that thing what is that I forgot you know the the route 70 or something like 70 78 something like that?

I think it was 85 is it is it the odd numbers that go east west?

Okay okay.

Ma hi Max.

Yeah hi hi Max yeah thanks for thanks for taking the time to join the call.

Yeah yeah of course yeah I was telling Tracy you know we we you know the analogy I was giving was that you know we are like we make race cars but we don’t get to drive them you know so you guys drive them.

You know so so I’m always curious you know hey you know how is the experience I mean you know is it are you do you guys feel like you’re winning or you know anything we can do you know better.

You know awesome absolutely and I I want to start by saying it par I’m going to embarrass you a little bit but Parth has been fantastic in partnering with us.

I mean we need something he’s probably responding within the next 5 to 10 minutes even when he’s potentially sick or something right.

And so I definitely do appreciate that partnership and even as we’ve kind of gone through and expanded the amount of sites we’ve had in the last year that partnership has been great.

Because you’ve allowed us the flexibility to try to even hit things like oh our initial contract term ends here we would like everything to you know synchronize to that time frame and we know that it impacts your p&l differently.

Thank you for letting that hit so want to start off with that first thank you.

Thank you for that I mean know part you know good job you know on that.

You know I think I think you know that’s another you know big benefit working with you know startup small companies like us.

You know uh we are able to give that you know attention and the um you know handholding and the care uh you know so and that’s that’s you know I’ve you know I’ve seen that’s a big difference.

We have heard many times from our customers working with small companies versus working with large companies right so thank you for that.

Yeah we appreciate that yeah absolutely and I I would say overall functionality and use right site is very simple to utilize.

I mean because we get to determine the fields and parameters of how to capture the data and even search through the data like to me it it’s it’s pretty easy that way right.

Um you know if if I said you know something on like picture quality would only be that the only fear I have is that I would love to increase the um the resolution of our pictures.

Because the ability to zoom in and see sometimes gets restricted because of the quality that’s captured.

And I’m I’m assuming that’s also a setting that we can take.

I think I’ve seen it before where if we can increase it but obviously it’ll take up more storage space which in the back of my head is something that I’m we trying to manage to as well.

Exactly it’s the it’s the you know you guys pick and choose the right mix and we are actually even looking at you know implementing you know I think there is an actual size option that is available as well.

I’m not sure if you guys are using it so you can uh you know technically uh you know whatever the Android or iOS.

I know I don’t think we have it in iOS yet we have it in Android so you can take that and it’ll upload the exact size to the cloud so that will give you even so much better resolution right.

You you guys can do that the only thing is that you know if you’re taking a lot of photos that might cause some latency in terms of you know getting to the you know Cloud.

So we are looking look at you know possibly implementing a you know another thread so if your photo capture is not interrupted it’s added to a queue and then the queue processes it you know one by one one by one right that’s something that will make things easier and faster.

Yeah yeah no definitely Tracy any thoughts on the uh capture as well the U data capture process and photos or anything?

Yeah no no I would agree with you I mean the feedback from from the sides have all been positive it’s been um very user friendly and and easy to to start using.

Especially you know to ma this point as we have expanded when we um wanted to start capturing drivers information there was like no hesitation you guys just jumped right in there.

Um AR anytime I’ve had issues with you know downloads he’s always been immediate to respond um again just a fantastic vendor partner.

Um I would agree with with Max on the resolution um you know especially for our team because we do get into such detail.

Um and and those pictures I will say has helped us immensely in being able to recover um invalid uh uh dollars you know back from our customers.

We just had a big win um with that recently um this last week getting a a large repayment from from Walgreens wow nice.

So um yeah so it’s been great um I know when we first came on um we had a discussion with one of your other customers and we haven’t been able to really utilize it to help support carrier claims yet.

Okay but I’m hoping um as because we’re we’re doing a system implementation a deduction management system right now.

Okay so I’m hoping we can shift and and focus and really start to see you know a positive impact on the carrier claim side next year like we have with our customer nice nice nice.

Great great great but it’s been really easy and it’s been wonderful working with you guys.

And again you know our our sites have all had positive feedback.

Great so how how you know when you guys now right go and have that conversation with the retailer for example Walgreens here how effective right the conversation is or how effectively you’re able to make your uh you know case saying that hey guys we did indeed you know do our job right and here is a proof right how is that conversation going.

Nowadays, so I would say that it’s especially on our truckloads. You know, being able to have that picture and the supporting photos along with our load documents, right? Our pallet content reports, our load sheets, all of that to help support it. It helps eliminate any question, right, or doubt. So I think we’ve seen some positive impact there, as well as it just gives us further support for our disputes. Correct? Exactly, exactly. So you’re able to now, right? I mean, it’s not like before. It was like, “Hey, we don’t know what is going on. Hey, we did our job.”

Now you’re able to kind of have a feeble conversation, but now we’re like, “Hey, guys, we did our job right.” It’s a lot more— I mean, I don’t want to say assertive, but a confident ask, right? “Hey, it’s not fair for us to pay for these deductions. Please, you know, get it canceled.” You’re able to articulate that better. Right, absolutely. So, you know, they say that a picture is worth a thousand words, and I think that load proof absolutely supports that. Great, great, fantastic.

You know, we are challenged in the fact that we have a lot of high volume of case picking activities, right? So we’re still open to the risk of— I mean, if we were one item, full pallet truckloads, then it would be done and done, right? Here’s a picture, and you know that each pallet is one item. There’s the 20 pictures, you’re done. But we’re still open to the risk because of the nature of our business with the case picking that we could still be impacted.

But kind of to add on to what Tracy says, our strategy has been, you know, overwhelming the other side with evidence of why we believe that their deduction is wrong. The pictures are definitely helpful in providing that. Because what we recognize is that we’re not arguing or competing with the people who’ve created the programs or anyone at the warehouse. We’re arguing, competing with somebody who’s probably sitting in an AP role or somewhere else, trying to manage this through and doing their own evidence collection based on their subset of rules.

Part of what we recognize too is that sometimes, you know, when we get hit with overwhelming evidence, it’s easy for us to say, “Okay, we’ve got to let it go.” Yeah, that there might be that effect that comes with having additional pictures too. Yeah, yeah, yeah, correct. See, you mentioned the case pick. Is that so your point is, you know, if it’s obviously right, one SKU, one entire pallet of one SKU, that’s easy to, you know, prove how many you— it sounds like you guys have multiple SKUs.

That’s what it is within the same pallet. And I mean, there are some best practices. See, that’s something to think about if the time warrants, right? If it makes sense, what you could also do is, you know, try to limit— I mean, you know, I don’t know how realistic that is. Try to limit instead of having like 30 different SKUs on a pallet if you can limit it to five or six. If you can apply some kind of a label, what we have seen a lot of times is that it’s really a communication challenge between the sender, shipper, and the recipient.

And you know the shipper is obviously— right, you guys know your SKUs, you’re very, very familiar with your SKUs. You know what it is— SKU A, SKU B, SKU C, SKU D— but on the recipient end, they don’t know, and they’re trying to figure out all that. When the difference is so subtle, right, it’s a highly nuanced difference between QA and QB, they get frustrated. And that’s when, you know, they realize, “Oh my God, I’ve got to spend so much time to figure this out. You know what? I’m just going to, you know, issue a chargeback because now I’ve got to cover all this cost I’m spending on this labor.”

So what would make sense is if you can apply some kind of a label on those SKUs and keep the number less— like five or six or, you know, maybe a max of 10 or something like that instead of 30 different SKUs. And then you can apply some kind of a color-coded label on that. SKU A— all red color. SKU B— all green color. SKU C— all blue color, right? Like that, and make the job on the other end a little easier. That will also help you guys. Something to think about, you know?

No, I appreciate it. And to your point, one of the things that our customer service team is working on is trying to get more control of the order patterns. But like you said, sometimes we can’t avoid having, you know, maybe 10 different SKUs on it because one SKU might have only two cases ordered. Yep, right? Yep. And so we go into that, plus very compounded by the fact that the cost of pallets has been increasing.

So even if we wanted to introduce more— I mean, I’m sure everyone’s seen the cost of wood skyrocket. Yep. Availability started becoming, you know, we started limited even things like pico pallets and chat pallets, right? So, to your point, yes, absolutely. I think there’s more opportunity, and as we— like Tracy mentioned, we are going through very transparently a— it’s not going to help with deductions from a research perspective, but more of a workflow.

We are integrating with High Radius right now. Oh yeah, yeah, High Radius. Yeah, yeah. I mean, we’ll be happy to, you know, we’ll be happy to build some integration between High Radius and Load Proof also if that helps to pull the photos into High Radius pretty fast. Because High Radius is your— because we have done the exact same thing with Supply Pike. So Supply Pike is another, you know, deduction management system, and they talk to— they work a lot with Walmart, and they can even get feeds from retailing.

So, you know, we can help, you know, make that happen, right? Would it be easier if you can pull photos from Load Proof into High Radius and then, you know, submit along with the— whatever documents that you guys are submitting today? Right? Absolutely. Right? Like it takes out one complete step in the investigation process if it’s automatically loaded.

I’m glad you said that because the reason why I brought up High Radius is because I believe someone on your team or par or someone in the past said that you were exploring that integration piece. And it’s always been in the back of my mind as well. See, I mean, what makes it so easy is— I mean, as a matter of fact, I know there is one director of High Radius. She’s directly reporting to the C1, and she is at Georg Tag. I met her in one of the networking events here, and we talked about it a little bit.

But unfortunately, that did not gain any traction because we were— we didn’t have one solid customer that would come and say, “You know, do it for us.” Right? And now you guys are there. We’ll be happy to, you know, do it. It just— right when you guys bring that up as a customer to High Radius, it gets a lot more attention and a lot more, you know, excitement. We’ll be happy to partner with you guys that way.

Yeah, and that’s the kind of— probably the next thing I’d ask is, right? As we start heading into this more— I mean, we’ve been in a digital age, but, you know, every— the buzzword now is data, right? Data warehousing, like AI, all of these things require that the data is integrated. And the biggest thing that we see that is the most challenging on our side typically is how to take all these data sources, merge them together into something that has been validated and cohesive, and then develop an argument from there.

Right? And so, you know, whether it’s exploring integrations at the High Radius to eliminate process depths and have that data already merged or, you know, even abilities to tap into your data— kind of wherever your house, these fields of data so that if we wanted to do a quick analysis on something, right, we could automatically link it. Because we utilize Power BI a lot.

Yeah, and I know— and one of the challenges we’ve seen is that a lot of our other partners, retailers, whatever it might be, you know, we’re dependent on things like SFTP, which again is a snapshot of time, and you can only trigger that so much, right? Versus having something a little bit more alive. And so it’s not to say that we need it today; it’s just something to consider that, you know, the more we can integrate the data, the quicker our analyst can get the base information so we can spend our time on the root cause trend analysis.

Absolutely. I mean, see, even Power BI— you know, I don’t know. I mean, I’ve heard about Power BI; I don’t know Power Builder. Yeah, Power BI, sorry, that’s a Microsoft tool, right? Yes, Power BI. Yeah, sorry, Power Builder is a really old tool, old software that’s long, long ago, right? Like 20 years.

But I mean, Power Automate— I mean, that might be something similar to Zapier, right? So it’s something where, you know, if we have API keys, we should be able to connect your data via Power Automate. So I think we’d be happy to explore that integration as well. A lot of our customers have requested that, and I believe it would enhance the way we could operate in that area.

And then, see, with High Radius, we’re just finishing up phase two of our integration. So we’re focusing on optimization right now. I think it would be beneficial for us to have some kind of a high-level overview of what the project costs would be for integration from both sides, right? I mean, imagine going into a shortage deduction with all the shipping documents and the associated pictures captured.

Yeah, that would create a rock-solid argument, and I think having documentation along with photos would significantly bolster our case. That’s what I would say. So it’s really interesting. And even Markin, one of our customers, has successfully utilized this integration with Supply Pike. And so they’ve been able to manage chargebacks effectively because they can pull that data from Load Proof.

It’s interesting to see how Supply Pike has, you know, now started providing services that are pretty similar to what my team does organically for Pharmavite.