Case Study · Data Transformation · PE-Backed Food Manufacturer
A PE-backed food manufacturer thought they had competitive freight rates. They didn't. Shipping and finance weren't connected, and the real cost was invisible.
The Hidden Cost
Because shipping and finance weren't connected, the $250 lumper and $300 in detention never made it back to the rate comparison. Leadership saw "$800 per load." The P&L told a different story.
Before FreightPlus
Shipping managers "getting the best rates" from brokers, but all of that information lived in inboxes. No structured RFP. No rate benchmarking. No way to compare.
The order that triggered a shipment was never tied to the invoice that paid for it. Detention, lumpers, and accessorials were invisible at the planning stage. Finance reconciled months later, if ever.
No service metrics. No cost-per-customer visibility. No mode mix analysis. No way to explain to the board why freight costs were up 15% when volume was flat. Shared spreadsheets for appointment coordination.
Without true all-in cost data tied to orders, the customer couldn't build freight into product pricing or pass costs to end-customers. Margin leakage was real but unmeasurable.
A $250K/year TMS was on the books but wasn't solving the core problem: connecting order data to freight data. Expensive shelf-ware that added complexity without clarity.
Four shipping managers spending their days managing emails, reconciling invoices, and coordinating appointments via spreadsheet. High-value supply chain talent doing low-value data entry.
What FreightPlus Deployed
Started moving freight immediately via Email-to-Load ingestion. No integration required. Shipping managers forwarded existing emails to FreightPlus. Every load became a structured record from day one.
Built a two-way connection into their ERP at the order level. Purchase orders now flow directly into FreightPlus One. Shipment data, costs, and status flow back. Single thread from PO to invoice.
Deployed board-ready dashboards with end-customer level reporting: accessorial breakdown, cost per shipment, service by shipping site, and profitability by customer. All in the system the customer wanted: their ERP.
Our month end close processes and accruals have never been cleaner.
The Transformation
If you can't tie a freight invoice back to the order that created it, you're flying blind. We fix that in 90 days.