LoadProof Testimonial – Chris Shoemaker, Griffin

Thank you for taking the time, Chris. You know, I mean, we always appreciate it. It’s rare that we get this opportunity to hear from you guys. We make this tool with so much passion, thinking of all possible scenarios. We do the best we can, but at the end of the day, when we hear from people like yourself using the tool daily, that’s what makes us see the value. So, if you could share your experience with LoadProof—what the situation was like before using it and how it has improved since—let’s start there.

Okay, well, I’ve used LoadProof in two facilities. I was a big proponent at my last facility, but it never gained the traction I hoped for. This was due to the manufacturing environment, where not a lot of resources were put into logistics. Other issues took precedence over my desire to use it. It’s not that LoadProof wasn’t effective; we used it quite a bit. That’s why I felt comfortable bringing it to this operation, which struggles with new vendors coming on regularly.

We added about 10 new vendors each month last year. These vendors don’t know us well, and we’re getting to know them. So, these are suppliers shipping products to us, and we’re using LoadProof for quality audits on the inbound side. Initially, many vendors outside the U.S. were shipping containers to us, and the products often arrived damaged. LoadProof allowed us to streamline that process, uploading pictures in minutes for users throughout the company to access in real time.

We don’t have to deal with downloading pictures or re-uploading them. This streamlined everything, reducing emails and discrepancies with carriers about damage. We document damage for claims against the crates, and although the supplier pays the carrier, we can file claims since we’re the recipients. We’ve had instances of receiving damaged products worth $500 to $600, and we still pursue credits with the vendor. The pictures serve as documentation showing it arrived damaged, taking the back-and-forth out of the process.

The numbers speak for themselves. I’d estimate we save at least 100 hours a month just from reduced email communication with carriers and vendors. Previously, we spent hundreds of hours monthly determining liability. Now, we simply present the documentation and move on. This has allowed us to stop the endless email chains; we can just say, “This is the proof, figure it out.” We now have a user in our claims department who accesses the site to see documented damages, which frees us from having to find and send pictures.

In terms of peace of mind, it has made a significant difference. When I arrived at this operation, it was viewed as highly deficient, and everything we did was reactive. LoadProof allows us to be proactive, presenting real data that supports our claims. It gives credibility to our operation, changing perceptions from being troubled to being a top operation. We can now provide data instead of excuses, which has significantly altered our dynamic within the organization.

It’s fair to say we’re running a better operation now. We used to have upwards of 30 contested deliveries a month. Now, with LoadProof, we don’t have to contest loads at all. This is pure time savings, as no one needs to explain issues to our claims department anymore. Everything we need is documented and accessible. LoadProof holds down this part of the operation, allowing us to focus on other tasks without revisiting these issues

I’m sorry, what was the word you used? Load?

Proof is like, what is that? It’s holding—it’s kind of like a tent stake. It’s like, you know, when you go camping, yeah? Yeah, yeah, a tent stake. Okay, got it.

It’s in the ground. I don’t have to go back and visit it; it’s there doing its job. It’s nailed in pretty tight, and it’s there, right? I don’t have to go back and do anything with it, right? Got it, got it. This then allows me to turn my focus to other areas that need attention instead of being reactive every day and just putting out fires that pop up all over the place.

Yeah, I mean, there’s plenty of fires in other places, right? Correct, correct. In terms of operations, that’s the nature of it. In terms of inbound and the quality control on the inbound side of the operation, I don’t have to worry about that. That’s documented; I can move on from that as long as our receiving process is tight.

Yep, which it is now, and I have the documentation to prove it with the load proof. I can turn my attention to other areas, so I don’t know how you necessarily quantify that. I just know that on paper, in terms of the operation, I’m not as cluttered anymore. I can say that I have one area of my operation that I am 100% confident is bulletproof.

You know, between our receiving operation and the load proof—that is it. What about outbound? I know you guys don’t have any such issues on the outbound side, or is outbound pretty clean? Not bad, not really. We don’t use it too much on the outbound side. I used it extensively in my last position on the outbound side to document trailer seals, correct?

To ensure that when a trailer left our property, I have pictures of it on the trailer; it is sealed. It’s not my problem if the driver takes it off. Here, we do a lot more shipping with LTL and like UPS carriers—smaller carriers—so we really haven’t got to it on our outbound side so much. Even at that, we have our own trucks that deliver the product, so our drivers are there with our customers.

You guys have very good control over that; your drivers are doing a great job. They’ve been doing a great job, so not a whole lot of things go wrong on the outbound side. In our industry, customers can order product in February, but they might not open it until May when they’re actually getting around to setting it up in their showroom.

It can be months before they even actually get to it, so the outbound side has been a little tricky. I do feel like there’s some opportunity there for them to use that. For example, when our drivers go to a customer and they’re not there to receive the delivery, similar to what Amazon does, we can take pictures of where we put it.

So that we have that documentation to say, you know, I left it at this location at this time on this day, and we can share that with the customer when they can’t find their product. Got it, so are those like construction sites or something like that? They’re just smaller mom-and-pop little warehouse and greenhouse operations that maybe don’t staff people all the time.

But come March and April, they’re there as a full operation during their downtime. We will take deliveries to them; there won’t be necessarily anybody there assigned for them. But we have directions to deliver it to a certain location, like putting it outside their showroom or next to this barn.

We can actually use load proof to take pictures that we were there at this time; this was the product, and this is exactly where we left it on your property. I do feel like there’s some opportunities to use the program more for that type of documentation as well because we have had customers simply say they can’t find it.

We can show them where we left it. Got it, so you guys ship for greenhouses. Are they more like gardening products? Yeah, we have a few—our main areas of business are grower supplies. So we’re technically considered ornamental horticulture, which is just beautification. It’s flowers and anything you need to grow and plant flowers.

That’s been the bread and butter of Griffin for 75 years. We also have a branch of the company that specializes in construction—the construction of new greenhouses. There are different greenhouses that you can put in with all the different fixtures and irrigation and ventilation.

So we have the construction side of the business, and we have a very large retail side of the business, which is selling products for customers to use in their own gardens. Our biggest area of growth right now has been in controlled environmental agriculture, which includes marijuana.

Yeah, cannabis—that’s been a big one as more companies get into it as it becomes more legalized. A large part of our business supports the medicinal marijuana side. Anything that’s out in fields like corn and soy—we don’t do that. If it goes under a greenhouse, that’s what we do.

Got it. So, these greenhouses, they’re primarily cannabis, right? Yes, that’s correct. It’s very seasonal, as you can imagine. Our growers will start receiving product in December, January, and February, and they’ll start planting in February. They need to have their seedlings ready to sell plants, like mums, roses, or whatever they’re growing.

They start growing so they can ship them to Home Depot, Lowe’s, and Ace Hardware. We supply the smaller guys, not the big box stores. We supply seeds and starter plants, really anything related to beautification and landscaping.

It’s a very specific niche in that agricultural environment. So, do you folks share these photos with your vendors overseas? Do you show them how the product showed up so they can improve? Not so much.

When I talk about going on the offensive, that’s one of the things I discussed with my operations manager. Now that I have some concrete data, I can go back and say, “This month, we had 200 inbounds, and 50 of them had some sort of OS against it.”

Now I can show them the damages with pictures. This allows me to track and say that on a month-to-month basis, we’re averaging 25% of our inbounds with some sort of OS. That’s a big number—25% is significant. For 200 trucks coming in every month, that’s like 50 trucks.

Now, I’m on the offense. I can take the data I have and go to them with it before they ask about overages and shortages. I send them that data every month. I’ve been doing this for about four months, and it’s the only time the companies had any visibility into the operation.

This is an issue with hard facts against it; these are my vendors having issues. I would think about putting some kind of vendor performance program in place. You could rate the vendors and say, “Hey, vendor A has been doing a great job; I don’t have to scrutinize their quality audit as much.”

You could also have a kickback for the vendors. If they’re not doing a great job, maybe they need to improve their packaging or find a different carrier. I do think it would be beneficial, and it’s interesting you brought that up because I asked my boss about that recently.

I said, “What do you do with those emails I’m sending you?” I hope you’re doing something with them. He said to keep sending them; he’s working on it. I do feel like a vendor performance program could help, especially for long-term savings.

It’s going to strengthen your relationship with the vendor as well. I mean, I’m sure you guys want a good long-term relationship with these vendors because some of them might even give you specific niche products that you can only source from certain vendors. So, would it be helpful to have the ability to share this photo with the vendor? This way, you can communicate, “Hey guys, this is what we’re getting. What is going on? If there is something going on, we want to work with you and see if we can fix it and make the supply chain efficient.” Something to think about in the long run, right?

Yeah, I do like that. I’ve been doing this for about four months now, and I’ll give my boss a little more time with it to see what he can come up with before I start going more aggressive and more offended. Fair enough, let us know. I mean, that’s where we come in, right? Inbound is fascinating for us, and it’ll be helpful to share those photos with them because they think they are doing a great job shipping product to Griffin Greenhouse. They do get the feedback, but for whatever reason, they’re not aware. Maybe they’re not using the right gauge of the stretch wrapping; whatever they’re doing may not be enough. That feedback will always help them.

We are all here, and we can help you guys. Any capability that we can make available in the software will make your life easier and your vendor’s life easier. It can make that partnership a better win-win for both of you. We’ll be happy to help.

I get that and appreciate it. Thank you! Yeah, I mean, obviously, your quality audit is pretty good with all the photos and everything. That would also result in lowering your damages because typically what happens is once you complete the verification step after receiving, any concealed damages you see after that, you guys will eat it. That’s how the process works because it’s tough to go back and do a chargeback to the vendor once payment has been made for that specific purchase order or shipment.

Has that resulted in better quality of inventory or better reduction of damages post-verification? Right now, I would say we’re pretty early in the process to see any verified change. Month over month, we’re still up around 25-26%. That’s across all the vendors; that’s only four data points in four months. Prior to having Load Proof, we ran it for about four months before I started using it more frequently to produce that type of data.

So it’s hard to say right now if there’s going to be a reduction. Some of our shipments are booked a year out, so it may take a little time before we see that transition happen. It depends on how I load the gun for the buyers and claims department. I would like to see them do something with it, but right now, I think we’re so early in the process that I’m just giving them lots of good information. Time will tell.

You guys have done a great job, and now their gears are going to start turning. They will begin thinking, “What can I do with this?” There are 16 branches to Griffin, and Morgantown’s the biggest one we have. No branch has ever produced any KPIs or data like I’m producing now. The operation was stuck about 20 years behind. Nobody has KPIs; the processes are old, which is one of the reasons they wanted someone from a manufacturing environment to bridge these gaps.

Very interesting. They’re looking to roll out in the rest of the smaller branches. Load Proof was just one of the things I brought with me from my operations experience with other companies. I’m really trying to bridge that gap between modern operations and where they kind of got off the train 20-25 years ago. You guys are digitizing the supply chain in a small way, taking small steps, and it’s low-hanging fruit. You don’t have to spend a lot of money.

I literally just set the process in motion; it holds down the operation, and then I move on. That’s one of the things you strive for in operations—a repeatable process with predictable outcomes. I know I’m going to get out of it; I just have to check in daily to make sure the pictures are being taken, and then I know the process is being fed.

I’m glad to see the results. I was a little worried and not very happy in the previous organization that we were trying to help you guys. I could sense that frustration, but I’m glad to see the smile now. It wasn’t for lack of trying to get them to do it. When you have an operation struggling on the manufacturing side, all eyes go there. The only time they get upset is when a customer complains about a seal on a trailer not matching or the chain of custody not showing that seal.

That’s why I brought Load Proof on—to show that this is the exact seal that left on the truck. I’m sure they still have problems with it now. You’re not out there anymore, but I hear they’re struggling with the same issues they were two, three, or four years ago. It hasn’t changed, and it’s not for lack of trying.

I’m happy to see the fruit of all the effort. Hopefully, this results in some nice reward for you in some form or another. Let us know. Chris, you’ve been a great partner for us. Anything we can help with in terms of adding capabilities—sharing photos with the vendor or anything else—we’ll be happy to help.

At the end of the day, I appreciate it. I just got our Stafford location up and running a couple of weeks ago; they’re on Load Proof now. I’m checking in on them, and they’re using it, getting good feedback because it’s making their life easier. That’s really what I told them would happen—you’ll get time back.

Photos have become such an important part of our lives. It’s important to use that nicely in the enterprise environment with a system like this. Photos don’t lie; a photo is worth a thousand words. It tells the story so well; it’s a powerful tool. Thanks for taking the time to share this feedback. Let us know if there’s anything else we can do to make it even better. We’ve implemented many new capabilities, and I’m sure Par can show you all that.

Thank you very much for taking the time. This has been very useful, and it’s always fun and exciting to hear from the end user. We don’t get that on a daily basis. Par, do you have anything else you want to add?

Sorry, go ahead, Chris. You’re welcome. I believe in what you guys do; I believe in its validity and value to the operation, or else I wouldn’t have brought it on. Thank you, no problem. Do you have anything to add? Just one question—are both sides the biggest ones at Griffin Greenhouse, or are there smaller sites?