DSW Distribution – LoadProof Testimonial – Chris Thiel – Vice President Operations

So you know just diving into a few more questions here about your experience you know uh so what’s uh three things that you like about the tool so far you know um you know from maybe a process improvement standpoint or you know ease of use or you know what are what are some three things that you like about the tool. Yeah what we like a lot is I mean the one is that it’s all essentially organized into one one desktop so where um you know as a 3pl having multiple clients and uh different needs we we have one one place to go where it’s all stored in the cloud and we can go pull the data as we need to picture it as we need to and and share them with customers.

And the app having all the employees that have cell phones company cell phones and we’re using actually ipods for some of them on a dock and they’re able to use the app with ipods and we have more many people that can take pictures of all of anything that’s going on whether loads going out low builds coming in uh anything that needs to be worked on in the warehouse and we can categorize it based on a gumball walk or a quality issue and it’s nice and organized and it’s all in one spot.

And then and then the ability to put the multiple photos for one load into a nice clean pdf with notes on the photos and to be able to send that over to our customers we attach that and connect it with our automated receiving documents and go to our client so they have a nice professionally presented um documented images of of what happened with the receipts or shipment and it was working well for us we’re getting pretty efficient with it now.

Oh that’s great that’s great to hear and you know and and so you know you’re seeing some improved efficiency improvements on efficiency it sounds like and um you know it’s it’s just speeding up the process and it’s essentially organized so it’s easier to find the you know find the records and those kinds of things there as opposed to having you know a bunch of photos on a you know cell phone or in a digital camera or in someone’s email you know so yeah yeah exactly it’s not uh taking up the cell phone uh um memory with all that doing all the photos on it and and then we got to save it to you know you know somewhere else whether it be on a pc or a server somewhere.

And then we gotta email that over to the customers and and it just it clogs up you know the the emails as well the the storage and the emails as well this is nice and it’s organized it it reduces all that and it is streamlined and the the people can just take pictures on the fly out in the warehouse and it all goes to one plate and we don’t um the they don’t have to send it to a specific csr to go and retrieve it somewhere they can just send it here and then the cfrs go in there and they identify their own clients and pull it out so it is definitely more efficient for us and organized.

Yes thank you very much that’s a great great feedback and um okay so so where are you seeing the most savings it sounds like you know um you know a time time spent investigating these these claims and you know um you know just the time and labor you know savings on on that side you know where el where would you say that you’re seeing the most savings it’s with loadproof the the most savings is well one is it’s not necessarily efficiency but we’re there too but the biggest uh savings here is that um when people in the warehouse are taking photos they don’t know who to send it to and and so if some things get lost or missed they they may get sent to the wrong person and never get done for the customer or saved uh or you know so that’s the biggest one.

So then obviously the customer has says why didn’t i get photos of this damage or why and i get photos of this when we spend time trying to figure out where if did we take a photo and where we put it and who do we send it to um this is just much more organized to be able to do that and it’s just to be able to do things on the fly and not worry about who it’s going to it goes all to a centrally located place our cfrs can go in here and uh reference it to a receipt or to an order or to to a quality issue and and to a cus a client and get that information over to them and we know for sure we have it so it’s it’s the efficiency is just the everybody knows what to do it’s one way to do it and it’s all streamlined.

Versus you know kind of every employee kind of doing their own thing taking photos and then coming in and sending it to one person clogging up their their email on their desktop and then having have that sent out but no it’s it’s uh it’s been very efficient overall I mean we’re just barely getting started so every every every week that goes by we’re getting better and better at it yes yes and it’s going to just keep growing and you’ll find other areas to implement in as well and you know get the most value out of it you know and uh i remember when we talked you know back in april you mentioned you mentioned that you were looking to solve some compliance issues in you know food and pharmaceutical and um you know so have you have you been able to you know take any steps there in you know implementing it in that area.

Yeah we we’ve always been you know having to take photos and document things for our clients what this has let us do is to be able to do it more more efficiently and quickly and keep it organized and stored so we have it at our fingertips but it it is helping us in other areas too i guess because it is so easy and efficient so what we do is like various programs one of the crosstalk program uh which food product is coming in so we’re not really picking orders and we just get full pallets come in they stay for a day or two and we reorganize the peels that go out for different deliveries but we we see that some of the palace you know we know that food great palace they can’t be broken or damaged or chipped or you know and so we’re taking a lot of photos for that and we’re able to get feedback to to um from the crosstalk customers you know it helps prevent claims.

Where we’re able to document and assure that more photos are getting to our customers hands where they have more confidence than us so that you know when something does come up that was damaged they don’t wonder what a dsw did you guys then report it and they lose credibility and us that you know even if we can show them after the fact it still gets them thinking that dsw may have caused that damage but now that we’re far more frequently getting the right photos to the right client at the right time it’s a lot less more credibility for us and a lot less potential claims that’s great um and that’s exactly what we we want to solve there and you know find out you know what’s the you know what’s the return on investment you know what what is the the value that we are saving there and you know compare that with what we’re spending you know and um you know being that load proof is such a low cost that you know it’s the value that we’re saving is probably exceeding the cost of you know what we’re spending with.

Oh definitely yeah just for the go plan at 100 a month it’s uh just the efficiency alone we’re saving a lot more than that per month I mean just just our internal labor cost we’ll be saving more than a hundred dollars a month easily on that but but it also again we weren’t really looking at it initially to everybody wants a lower cost but that wasn’t the initial reason why we were doing it that’s at the benefit and we were just looking at it to have a more professional way to organize and provide our clients with you know what they what they need for for a good service but they were just added benefit to be that much more efficient