ShipDNA
ShipDNA Saves Customers Time and
Money with LIVE Connect
Introduction
ShipDNA is a highly successful division of Frontera Supply, which handles millions of freight and Parcel shipments for some of the world’s largest industrial production facilities. The company, headquartered in San Diego, provides shipping and fulfillment operations for its customers through actionable data analysis, carrier negotiation services, carrier audit services and shipping software solutions. As demand increased, ShipDNA was seeking a Less-Than-Truckload (LTL) solution that could easily integrate into its platform and handle a multitude of clients that work with Carriers across the country.
Challenge
For more than 35 years, ShipDNA has helped its customers reduce their transportation costs while introducing more effective logistics cost management controls and reporting capabilities. While it works with companies across all industries, ShipDNA’s expertise and clientele are positioned in small package Parcel shipping. However, as e-commerce continued to boom and the transportation market continued to change, more and more companies were adding LTL services to their transport modes. To keep up, ShipDNA needed to improve the way it delivered LTL solutions to its technology suite in order to continue to provide exceptional optimization and service to its customers.
“A lot of larger companies that are in Parcel are also doing LTL, so our customers started asking for LTL solutions, and we knew it was a large opportunity for us,” said Rick Gomez, vice president of sales for ShipDNA.
As a provider of transportation management systems (TMS), ShipDNA also needed to offer dynamic pricing models yet have the data analysis tools to help with negotiating tariff costs as well.
Solution
ShipDNA was introduced to Banyan Technology’s platform and LTL offerings through another partner that it works with regularly to provide for its current customers in the Parcel space. That partner was already utilizing Banyan’s LIVE Connect®, the industry’s most flexible technology solution with the most carrier connections for real-time rating and scheduling of shipments, for its customers outside of ShipDNA. After learning more about the solution, ShipDNA set up a meeting with Banyan.
“We met with Banyan when we wanted to add LTL to our Parcel outfit because the solution we had been using was legacy technology that has its challenges,” Gomez said.
“To use it, we have to order rates or ask for rate tables in a certain structure and then manually enter it, and it really nickel-and-dimed the customers and didn’t create a great consumer experience while Banyan has the LTL access that we need.”
ShipDNA integrated Banyan’s LIVE Connect freight management platform into its existing TMS solutions for LTL prospects and clients. It helps ShipDNA’s clients retrieve quotes from all of their preferred Carriers in real time, creating operational efficiencies for ShipDNA as well as the customer. This, in turn, saves customers money and increases ShipDNA’s margin.
“Going the API route means that the customer is always up to date – as soon as Carrier rates change and are uploaded into the Carrier’s servers, it is automatically adopted, consumed and exposed by Banyan, so they are always current and compliant, which is important from a customer perspective because when you’re quoting, billing or reconciling, you want to make sure your rates are accurate,” Gomez said.
ShipDNA now offers the Banyan solution to current and prospective customers in the LTL sector. It is the recommended platform to every company that regularly uses more than five Carriers and needs easy, accurate rating, scheduling, and billing.
“Banyan allows us to support our customers with greater facility, because it is not as resource-intensive as other solutions we use,” Gomez said. “It requires less maintenance and capital from us because the Banyan system automatically updates rather than us having to do it manually like with the other solutions.”