LoadProof Video Testimonial – Kristin Schmitt

Hello Kristin, can you hear me? We’ll just give her a minute to connect. Okay, how are you? Good, good, how are you doing? Good, thank you. Uh, first of all, thank you for taking the time to join this meeting. So, how are things? I was editing the load proof. Things are going well with the proof. Our team uses it every day, and we’re using it at all our facilities, which is a good thing, and it’s been very helpful for us.

Let me see here, I have some information. I talked to several of our VC auditors to get their feel for it and see how it’s working, and they like it. We all like it; it’s helping document the processes and saving us a lot of time. But there is one area that is on everyone’s wish list, and again we audit in Salt Lake City, Dallas, Duquesne, Pennsylvania, and we have two facilities in Tifton, Georgia that we’re using it for. Everyone’s wish list is the camera quality piece.

That’s the part we’re trying to see if there can be any improvement because a lot of times we still use our cell phones to take pictures because the camera piece is pretty fuzzy. All right, I was just trying to find the actual point of contact to help with things like this, and I wasn’t successful in doing that. I’m usually reaching out to Todd Ray and Abe Frank’s, but they were busy with their own schedule, so I couldn’t manage to get them in touch.

I work with Abe; he’s a vendor compliance specialist, and Todd is the director at Tifton. I work with both gentlemen, and it has been extremely busy. I understand supply chain in general has been very clogged. Going forward, you can definitely contact me. I’m going to help hopefully answer your questions and provide you with feedback.

All right, perfect, thank you. I think I got the correct contact now, so moving forward, we can do this with ease. Before we go ahead, Chrissy, what were the actual problems your team was trying to solve before using Load Proof?

So, typically, the VC auditors are out on the floor auditing to make sure our pillows, mattress covers, and bedding products are accurate. The primary goal is receiving; our QC team uses it for documenting truckloads coming in. If it says 16 pallets, we would count 16, and now we’re using Load Proof to take pictures to document all that in one place instead of having one spreadsheet here, some documents there, and handwritten notes.

Everything is now in one area, a huge time saver, and much easier to fight and dispute chargebacks. That’s really what vendor compliance is about. I’m the compliance manager; we review and dispute chargebacks daily. If they say, “Hey, you shipped us grade B pallets,” here’s the picture, the proof we shipped grade A heat-treated.

Now we just have one database, Load Proof, everything is there, easy to access, and really easy to use, very user-friendly. Before, we were putting everything in an Excel spreadsheet. Our team is responsible for catching potential violations, documenting issues like shipping calls out on pallets, which is a $250 charge when it goes to close.

We were manually typing everything into Excel, all that duplicate work. Now we take pictures, document it right there, and we’re done. At the end of the day, we can download all that information, review it, and we do a weekly recap at each facility on potential saves. For instance, this week, you can go ahead and share your screen if you want to.

Let me see, I’m not the greatest at it, but Carter, did you allow it? Okay, let’s see. Can you see? Yep, that’s what you’re seeing. These are our customers for the most part. For that week, this is how many cartons were audited, these are the potential violations. Everything we do is potential because it’s caught beforehand.

This is the accuracy, and as we go through, this is the potential that was captured for that one facility, Dallas, for that week. We caught about $8,000 worth of potential chargebacks, so that’s a savings. We really go through production and our shipping notes. If there was any CT pack, we use the seal number a lot for CT path violations, which helps us continue to earn that certification.

It’s a great feature; we use it often. You guys use Load Proof to complete these audits, is that correct? Yes, that’s great. And this is just over $7,900 for the week. Let me show you another one. This is a big one; can you see it? Yes, that’s one week at one facility.

What happened is JC Penney, when they went into audit, all the GS1 shipping labels were in the wrong spot. JC Penney charges for each carton, and it’s over $60,000 just for that one customer. We captured all that in Load Proof and communicated it to senior management to see opportunities for improvement.

We break it down by customer, by accuracy, pallet audits, errors, and carton audits. We do that daily but send this out weekly. This is really great information; thank you very much. Load Proof is really helping this process, and the team loves it. I’m a big believer in getting the team’s feedback, and they really enjoy it.

It’s a huge time saver instead of writing notes down on post-its, going back to your desk, and typing everything in. It’s a one-stop shop, and they really use it. That’s the idea—to shorten those steps and have everything in one centralized location where the whole team can access it.

I wanted to ask where you guys first heard about us or if you remember. I found you on the internet through some white pages, and I was unhappy with our auditing process, which was very old-fashioned. I thought there had to be a better way, and through some testimonials, I found Load Proof.

That’s great! They must be loving the fact that you found Load Proof and brought it to the team. You’re probably getting some pats on the back. We see that with other accounts, where people get promotions and raises. Hopefully, that’s coming your way as we continue resolving issues every week.

There’s so much information, so many audits, and shipments. You can’t remember everything day to day. Load Proof gives a quick snapshot with all the details, and when a chargeback comes in months later, it’s easy to review and dispute.

When an actual chargeback hits the books, you can go back to your Load Proof documentation and say, “Wait a minute, here’s the proof we shipped compliant.” You can dispute it, and a few weeks later, you win that reversal, which is nice. How do you argue with photos?

That’s right! We document a lot. We really do; that’s what it’s all about. It’s a quick, easy guide, very user-friendly. We’ve discussed the savings from chargebacks, and the time savings from a more efficient process is also significant. Absolutely, we’re avoiding those charges.

If we didn’t have that documentation, we’d be hit with $66,000 in charges because customers are hitting us hard post-COVID, being aggressive with charges. We need to be very detail-oriented and strict in documenting everything. When Load Proof was first introduced, how did users receive it?

Did they pick everything up off Load Proof right away? We had training classes for everybody, and the VC auditors reported through me. We had a lot of training in the first week or two. It took some time, especially with multiple loads, switching from one to the next.

Once everyone got the hang of it, within a week or two, they were good. We have a new auditor in Tifton, and they are just now walking through it. Again, they got it within a day. It takes time to understand all capabilities and functions, but the transition from where we were to where we are today is great.

The only area on the team’s wish list seems to be the camera quality of the pictures. We can definitely have that configured after we finish this session. I’ll help you with the next steps on that. We’ve added a lot of different capabilities since we kicked this off, and there are a couple of settings we can change to improve photo quality.

If you have time next week, we could set up a meeting to go through all that. I would love that! Absolutely, it might be worth running through all the new features and capabilities. If you have any documentation or training guides, I’d love to pass that on to the team.

I went back to my team for some feedback. The biggest thing they mentioned was the pictures. When auditing multiple orders, they sometimes have six loads out there at the same time, and they wish there was more information available for customer names and trailer names for those multiple areas.

We have users on mobile devices and tablets, so if we add more info, it could cause challenges with screen compatibility. We’ll have a look into it. Those are the two main areas, but regarding image quality, we already have a ticket out. It’s just configuration, and we can work on that together.

No other questions from my end; we can set up a meeting for next week. We’re good with devices; everything’s working right now. Next Friday looks open for me except for a 1:15 meeting. If that works, I’ll change the configuration for image quality today.

We’ll have good quality images starting from today, and I’ll show you where that is too. I’ll stop the recording; our boss wanted to have a look for training purposes.