Case Study: Global Foods

Global Foods needed a TMS to manage their growing business. They chose BrokerPro just before their business grew by 150%.

Introduction

Food distribution is a $1.5 trillion market in the United States. Half of that market is retail distribution for food consumed “at-home”, while the other half is commercial – meaning food consumed “away from home.” Americans spent more money consuming food “away from home” for the first time in 2013, and that market trend continues to grow.

Founded in 1996 and based out of Las Vegas, Nevada, Global Foods is a leader in commercial food service distribution. They specialize in serving mass feeding operations such as schools (K-12 and post-secondary), correctional institutions, employee dining rooms, and food banks. By strategically sourcing products globally, Global Foods distributes food and related products to customers in 48 states.

The TMS Problem

To maintain their status as a leader of national specialized food distribution, Global Foods knows they must provide the tools and support that their staff needs to be able to provide individual and personal support for each customer. Through hard work and a dedicated team, sales had been growing significantly. Market trends further amplified their growth, and their ability to provide the superior customer service on which they built the company was hampered. Their existing systems for tracking shipments, working with carriers, and serving customers were no longer sufficient. They were bursting at the seams. Employees needed better tools to do their jobs well. Leadership knew that if didn’t modernize their systems that the growth they had worked so hard to obtain was at risk.

Decision Making Process

Since Global Foods didn’t have a legacy TMS to consider, they had a greenfield opportunity on which to build a solid foundation for their team.

Their new system needed to be web-based. Much of their shipment information lived in Excel spreadsheets and in emails, and it was becoming increasingly difficult for them to find and update key information about shipments. Everyone in the company needed to be able to access this data anytime and anywhere.

One of the benefits of using on-premises software, though, is that it was fast. They weren’t willing to accept a slow or complex system at the expense of it being web-based.

The new system should also give them capabilities like XXX, YYY, and reporting – all of which were extremely lacking or non-existent with their current system’s capabilities.

The TMS Solution

Global Foods began interviewing different TMS vendors. They found that the majority of TMS’s were too complex to learn and to use. Their team would have been made less efficient. Getting shipment information was difficult because they had to traverse numerous screens via an antiquated interface. Additionally, the leadership team was never certain how they would be able to extract meaningful data from these systems.

When they reached out to Infinity Software Solutions to learn about BrokerPro, they saw an immediate difference. Unlike the other systems they had seen, BrokerPro had a simple design that masked a super-powerful system. From securing the load to creating bills of lading to securing payments from customers, BrokerPro’s user interface allowed their team to manage all aspects of a shipment with very few clicks.

Moreover, BrokerPro was lightning-fast and reliable. Global Foods team members didn’t experience slow load times or, worse, an unavailable system. BrokerPro’s system architecture utilizes Turbolinks and in-memory caching – reducing page load times and the number of database queries required. This results in a speedy system for end users. Finally, BrokerPro has a 99.9% uptime which is achieved via an intelligent use of load balancers and failover design. All of these behind-the-scenes architectural elements assured Global Foods that there was no risk to moving from their on-premises solution to a web-based system.

Finally, the leadership team at Global Foods knew that adding an advanced TMS like BrokerPro to their business would come with its fair share of questions from its team. After reading reviews on Capterra and speaking with the team at Infinity Software Solutions, they were confident that they would be provided with exceptional support. They have been delighted with how helpful BrokerPro support has been and stated “the BrokerPro customer service is amazing.

In Summary

Global Foods’s transition to BrokerPro was seamless and couldn’t have come at a better time. According to Mike Richau, National Sales and Operations Manager, “BrokerPro has changed our company. We made the change a month before our business increased 150%. We couldn’t have done it on the old system.”

Global Foods found an excellent TMS partner in BrokerPro, and they are now well-poised to continue their tremendous growth rate and provide exceptional service to their customers.