LoadProof Video Testimonial – Jade Vinet, Wholesale

So Jade, you know, thank you very much for taking the time to join this call. I know we really appreciate it. I mean, the analogy that I would like to share is, you know, we build race cars, but we don’t get to race them, right? You guys race them. So that’s how we look at these systems; we build them, and we don’t use them on a day-to-day basis, and you guys do. That’s why it’s always exciting for me to hear what you guys think, how it’s working out, and how it’s really solving your problems. That’s very important for us, right? That’s why we are having this session. So, if you could please start with introducing yourself, your role, your day-to-day responsibilities, and then talk about your organization and the products that you guys share. We can get started there.

Okay, so my name is Jade. I’m with Wholesale Building Products, and we’re a wholesaler of building materials. We’re based in South Florida and North Florida, so we have two locations. I do a little bit of everything: operations, logistics, marketing, sales, and I do a lot of system implementation. I work with Wholesale and a couple of our sister companies. Whenever there’s a new technological thing we’re putting in, I usually get involved because I learn it quickly and then I can teach others how to use it. Nice! We’ve had Load Proof now for about 10 months; we started in August last year. Nice, nice, nice!

So, what was the problem you had before, and why did you choose Load Proof? What problem were you looking to solve? We were using pictures already; we were taking them and they were being automatically updated to a Dropbox. We had different Dropbox accounts with different phones. If you were taking pictures for trucks doing local deliveries, for example, you had to use a specific phone because that one was linked to Dropbox, and it was just a mess to organize. Dropbox doesn’t have a sorting system, and you don’t have metadata to do searches on. So, it was just like there were only a few of us with access to the Dropbox accounts, and whenever we had a team or wanted to confirm something that had gone out on a truck, sometimes we had pictures and sometimes we didn’t. Often, there was only one person taking pictures at a time, so to not delay the process, some people would skip the pictures. It was very hard to get the backup we needed when customers were placing claims.

Right now, I use Load Proof just to double-check things, just for fun, but we were never doing that before. All the salespeople, when they wanted some type of backup, had to go to three of us and search through Dropbox to find the correct pictures. That was obviously very painful. It was better than having no pictures at all, because with no pictures, you’re blind, but it was very painful. We had been trying to solve that problem and were looking into different options, but we never came across Load Proof. We actually found Load Proof visiting a supplier, USG in Miami, and we saw it and thought, “We want that.” Since then, we’ve been using it, and life is so much better.

So, how is life now with Load Proof? If you could please describe how it compares to before. You talked about the challenge with getting to the right Dropbox folder and all that. It’s much better. It’s night and day because now every salesperson can log in on their own and do searches based on so many criteria. It even works with the tickets we have in the yard; the guys can just scan the barcode. They even have to put some information in manually, but at first, they thought it was too much work. Then they realized how much of a backup it provided. Now, they don’t have to remember everything; as long as they took their pictures, they know they’re covered.

We can check what we shipped and what we received. Because there are so many fields, even if there are typos, we always find what we’re looking for because there’s always something else we can search. Just five minutes ago, one of the salespeople couldn’t get into Load Proof, and I found out that we can email links to customers. Now, they can receive pictures directly. It’s been working really well, and it has already saved us money. We’ve used it for receiving, shipping, staging, and for proof of deliveries as well.

It looks like you guys are a lot more mobile in your organization. I want to share that there is an app called Load Proof Viewer. Today, you have to go to your computer to search for photos, but now there’s an app that lets you find photos right from your mobile device. I didn’t know about that! I’ll look it up after this. I assume it’s just part of it, so I can download it and start using it? Yes, you can. We’re giving it away for free for all our current customers right now.

How many users do you have in both facilities? For the mobile app, we have close to 20 users that take pictures. Instead of setting everybody up with separate accounts to view pictures, we just created a general account where everyone logs in to see the pictures. The users have individual accounts, so we know who took which picture. This has eliminated confusion. Before, we had just one phone, and nobody knew who took what. Now, accountability is in place because everyone has their own phone with their account.

If you could please list all the key benefits you got after implementing Load Proof, what are those? Visibility, accountability, backup to solve problems—whether we were in the wrong or not. It gives confirmation that we’re giving credit because clearly, we didn’t ship what we said we shipped, or we’re not giving credit because the customer is wrong. It also helps with claims for damages. Before, it was hard to say if we damaged it or if they did. Now, it’s easy to see if it was delivered in good condition with the picture as proof.

What was the process like when something went wrong and a customer complained? How much time did you spend going back to look at orders, bills of lading, packing slips, and having meetings? Sometimes hours. It could take days of scanning through multiple systems. We had paperwork scanned into another system called Udam, and we had that backup for packing slips and receiving. Between looking into that and pictures, sometimes we could spend hours on it. We often ended up giving up if we found very little information.

How is that now? How much time are you spending on these issues? Way less. Now, every salesperson can spend 5 to 10 minutes looking through Load Proof to find what they need. They send it to Jessica, and if she needs to process a credit, she gets one email with all the explanations and photos. It has taken a lot of work off her shoulders. You guys have streamlined the process significantly, which is fantastic.

How was your experience rolling out the new system? There are always technical challenges and adapting to change. Hollywood was way easier because we were already taking pictures there. Nobody in the warehouse complained. They were used to taking pictures, so they didn’t have to chase down the correct phone anymore. In Jacksonville, it was harder because they didn’t take pictures before, so we had to go up there a few times and check that they were taking pictures. In the office, it was mostly a learning curve to remember that they could check themselves.

It was a little difficult for older people who weren’t used to new websites. They needed help remembering where to click. Now, even I sometimes have to remind myself to look up pictures first instead of running around looking for them. In Jacksonville, it was a bit tougher because they didn’t have the practice of taking pictures, but we worked through it. Overall, the transition has been much smoother now that everyone is on board.

Before, okay, he getting we’re still we still have a little bit of that, but you know we’re not, it’s repeating. Don’t forget to take the pictures, don’t forget to take the pictures. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And then in Jacksonville, a little bit of a problem because the reception over there is terrible. Okay, so the Wi-Fi coverage and the cell phone reception is terrible, and it’s just because of where it is. We’ve had Verizon in there, we’ve had AT&T in there, we’ve had T-Mobile in there. Yeah, and they’ve all given us different types of solutions we can do.

You know we’re slowly investing in solving it as we’re remodeling different buildings and doing improvements in our facilities, but it’s just like pretty much a cell phone dead zone. Yeah, and it’s a 20-acre yard, okay, so covering everything with Wi-Fi is really hard.

Correct. That’s not—I mean, we have a service called Symmetry. You guys can get it yourself too. I mean, there is some service called Symmetry, and we get our data plan from them. You know we have customers that ask us, “Hey, can you ship us tablets with a data plan?”

We have deployed some tablets with a data plan, and we can help you with that because usually what happens is those— the unique thing with this Symmetry is that it runs on a different channel. So this is not on the same channel where we consume stock and text, but that is on a slightly higher priority channel, so that makes sure they get really good bandwidth.

Right, oh, because our problem is that you go in certain places in our yard, and no matter what cell phone company you’re with, it says there’s no service. Correct? Yeah, yeah, that’s pretty—I mean I’ve seen that many times. That’s why you guys use Park Load, right? You can park the photos and then you can upload. Correct, correct.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So they use Park Load, and then in Hollywood, same thing, but Hollywood they’re actually running the cables today, okay, because we’re proving that we’re going to all scan guns. Okay, nice.

So we have to have good Wi-Fi connection everywhere, correct? So they’re in process. I know they started sometime this week, but I saw them today running all the cables to cover our entire yard in Hollywood with—we’re doing that just in Hollywood to begin with the scan guns.

Okay, okay. So that right now we have guys that have complained. They’re like, “Oh, but because they—especially here we have no problem with cell phone reception.” So it’s all the ones that use the devices that don’t have data, okay, that just connect to Wi-Fi because they want to use their personal cell phones.

Okay, okay. So we really put data plans on those phones, especially that we’ve known for a while. Obviously, it’s a long process to update all of our warehouse and switch our system to scanning. But we’ve known that we were going to update to it, so they do the same thing. They use Park Load, and then when they get back within range, they upload it.

Okay, great, great, great. Okay, nice, nice, yeah. But that was one of the things that, you know, the few implementation is okay. Well, remember to do it, and then, you know, the complaints and the push back we had is like, “Oh, but I always have to Park Load it or I don’t have connection.” But that, you know, they work around that.

Yeah, and then here in Hollywood that’s going to get solved because we’re getting Wi-Fi coverage everywhere right now. Nice, nice, nice. Yeah, I mean, eventually that’s what happens, right? You got to have all the really good sophisticated data collection tools to ensure your inventory accuracy.

You know, to be typically once you invest in scan gun, scanning technology, barcode scanning, and you have barcodes everywhere, your inventory accuracy could—you know, you can maintain a 99% inventory accuracy. Yeah, yeah, that’s exactly what we’re aiming for.

I mean, we’re investing heavily in the whole new inventory management that includes a warehouse management system based on barcodes and scan guns. That’s really what we’re trending towards because right now, I mean, our biggest pain points were that like we had no visibility on claims.

We didn’t know which—pretty much, I mean, low proof solve. Like, yeah, I don’t know what’s the percentage, but most of those issues, especially, I mean, it still happens every once in a while that we’re looking for something, and you know, the guys didn’t take the best picture of it.

Yeah, yeah, you know, a picture when it was already wrapped so much that you can’t really count what’s on that pallet anymore, and they didn’t take a picture before wrapping it. But that’s something that we addressed as we go, and you know, it’s just like make sure you picture before because we can’t see anything on this one.

So, you know, they’re all improving, and they’re all—but everybody’s pretty process. Yeah, good. So nobody complaining about using it and having it; everybody’s happy about having it. Got it, got it. That’s good, that’s good.

I mean, I think it looks like your construction industry is a little different. It’s more little old school; you know, things people do in the old school way, and it’s still in the yard, technically, not in a warehouse. Maybe it’s building materials, bricks, and stuff like that, right? So that’s—it’s all lumber, plywood, building materials.

Okay, so it is, and it’s all rough stuff, so it’s still PR old school. And not just us; like our competitors are similar. Our suppliers are similar; you know, it’s all—we’re the owner of wholesale, really trying to improve and help improve our operational issues and make sure there’s less mistakes for our customers.

And we operate efficiently and accurately, so that’s pretty much what we’re aiming for right now. Great, great, great, great, great. And so, you know, would you recommend proof for someone like yourself? I mean, you know, running operations, running sales, taking care of inventory and all that?

You know, would you recommend Load Proof? Yeah, and we—I don’t know about the other people, but I’ve talked about it to some of, like, because I go to a lot of conferences and trade shows and stuff like that. Whenever we have to send somebody to those things, I usually go.

And I was just one—it’s called AD, Affiliated Distributors. So we’re a member of the group for Affiliated Distributors. Yeah, it’s a purchasing group, and we meet twice a year. One of them, once a year, there’s a round table with people in your industry that have similar types of businesses but in different regions in the US.

It’s usually maybe 20 companies per group. Our AD Gypson group has 600 something companies in it, okay? So you know they break you down, and then there are different sessions over the course of like three days. Yep.

I mentioned, like, you know, people asking questions about what do you do for this? Do you have this problem in your market? We have that problem in our region because of this. So it’s just, you know, it’s kind of like a structured sharing session. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I mentioned Load Proof this time because somebody asked, like, how do you keep track of what you’re shipping, and do you guys take pictures? Yeah, and I’m like, yes, we have Load Proof. Nice, nice, nice, nice.

Okay, great, fantastic, fantastic. So you have any other, you know, requests or anything else that we can do for you, you know, in terms of enhancements to the software? You know, providing you additional capabilities that would make your life better?

There is—there’s a few technological things that don’t take away from the information we’re getting, but I find it when I navigate the website, okay? Not that it’s user friendly, and I mean, it’s a couple things. It’s like, I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed, so when you do a search for—and I wish I could share my screen, but I’m on my phone right now.

Okay, we can have—I can do a follow-up call with my tech support so you can share all those, you know. What it’s—a few things, but I noticed that when you’re in pictures for a certain load that were taken together, and then there’s a button that says go back to the previous page, yep, it doesn’t actually take you back to the previous page.

It takes you to another page that you’ve never visited before, okay? And then if the back button in the browser—and let’s say that was pictures in that set, well, you have to go back 10 times before you go back to what you all actually wanted.

Okay, okay, okay. So that’s just like because—and then I’m telling you because I knew we had the call, so like I went on it to, you know, of not think of things, but I knew you were going to ask because obviously when you do a review call, that’s always a question.

No, that’s very important. No, no, that you know we got to—if you guys are struggling, see, one very, very important rule that we follow any interface that we design is you got to be able to get your information within like three seconds, right?

That is very important because, you know, when someone is blaming you guys, right? I mean, you know, especially when—I’ve been to 200 plus warehouses. I’ve seen, you know, so many problems and solved all those problems in the warehouse.

And when someone is—and all these guys run a really, really tight ship, especially in smaller organizations like yourself, they take a lot of pride, you know, in the quality of the work they do. They do a great job, and it’s literally right. I mean, it’s a brotherhood—

That’s what I’ve seen. So our important rule is so when you are running such a tight operation, doing such a great job, when someone is blaming you guys, saying that, “Hey, you know, you shipped the product wrongly or damaged,” you know, a product was shipped, then, you know, you got to be able to get to that information within three seconds.

And then, you know, show them, “Hey guys, no, this is how we shipped it,” right? So if you’re not able to do that, you know, definitely we got to fix it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, so that’s the main one that I have found just using the—it’s on the website.

It’s not on the app. I don’t myself use the app that much, and I haven’t asked, but I haven’t heard. I did have an issue yesterday because there was an update on the app. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

The update—one of the guys outside, he came to me, he was like, “I don’t know, it keeps popping up that there’s an update.” He didn’t want to click it, so I installed the update for him. But after I had installed the update, the app would crash every time I was trying to open it.

I had to delete the app from the phone and redownload it, and then it worked. Okay, okay, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I think things like that—okay, I mean, that could be because of the connection and because of the quality of the connection sometimes, right?

It doesn’t download the exact right version—things like that happens. But we’ll make sure, you know, we’ll at least minimize that. We’ll make sure, you know, see, I really don’t know. I know the app kept crashing after I downloaded the update, and the update said it was downloaded, you know.

It promised—it’s on iPhone, so I clicked open, yeah, and then every time I tried to open it, it would bring us to the page to put his pin, yeah? And then we would put in the pin, and then the app would just completely shut down, crash.

Okay, got it, got it. And so you guys use all iPhones, right? iPhones in your organization? Androids? Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay.

Yeah, so people who use their phone—so when we get people that have actual phone like myself, like I have a company phone, the company asks, “Do you want an iPhone or an Android?”

Okay, and they let the user choose whichever one they’re more comfortable with. Okay, got it. And then the ones that we had extra laying around that were using that don’t have SIM cards in them right now, like that don’t have a phone service, yeah, those are iPhones.

And we had them left over from—I don’t even know what we had them left over from, to be honest. But we had like six laying around, and we just use them for that, but those are iPhones. But a lot of people do have Androids too, correct? Correct, correct.

Yeah, I mean, see, generally for the enterprise, especially if you are trying to do something that not normally, you know, what a phone wouldn’t do, our recommendation is Android because Apple is great. Apple is a great product, and you know, they have, you know, very good everything.

But it just from an enterprise perspective when you have to, you know, configure the device when you have to, you know, technically alter the device to fit your, you know, for example, you guys might have an MDM.

You know, your—you might have a security layer and things like that, right? When that is needed, Android works better. You know, Android is flexible, so that’s why, you know, generally you might also see, you know, we support Android better than iOS, but we do support iOS. I mean, we do support iOS.

Yeah, absolutely, yeah, yeah. But that’s just something that happened yesterday. I mean, I deleted the app and I redownloaded it from scratch from the App Store, and it worked fine.

Exactly, yeah. Usually, that takes care of it because, you know, what happens is, you know, when the connection is not great, the download doesn’t happen perfectly. You know, something like that occurs, so okay.

That’s great. I mean, anything else that you want to share? I mean, I’ll ask my technical team to reach out to you, email you, and you know, we’ll take care of this issue. We’ll understand thoroughly and see, you know, how we can fix it so you don’t have to keep going back 10 times, right?

That is very important. Anything else that you want to share with me? No, I think that’s like the only thing we had that wasn’t, you know, from the using it perspective.

Okay. I know when we got it, you guys made the—like, you know, so it’s not just vertical that we can switch them. Exactly, yeah, you can see that too now.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then we have, you know, click on it, and then it expands. It’s a couple clicks, but yeah, no, the back is the one that’s to me the most annoying.

Okay, all right, so we’ll get that addressed. Yeah, so thank you. Thank you very much for your time, Jade. I mean, this feedback helps a lot. Thank you for the, you know, problem. Thank you for doing the call with me too.

Yeah, thank you. Have a nice rest of the day, MH. All right, you too. Bye-bye.