Royal Supply Chain Outgrew Their TMS and Found the Right Solution to Enable Their Growth with BrokerPro
Introduction
Founded in 2008, Royal Supply Chain is a fast-growing third-party logistics provider based out of Toronto, Ontario. They expanded into the United States in 2019 when they opened a new office in Des Moines, Iowa. RSC offers a 24x7 service to their customers and carriers and specializes in supply chain management solutions that include LTL, FTL, refrigerated freight, expedited shipments, heavy-haul, and warehousing.
Royal Supply Chain excels at handling high-value products ranging from fine art to industrial equipment. As a 24- hour and 7 day per week operation, Royal Supply Chain offers a 100% customer service guarantee; executing all the necessary components required to ensure the safe and timely management of their customers’ goods.
The TMS Problem
Early on, Royal Supply Chain knew that they needed a transportation management system (TMS) so they could easily track loads and pay their staff commissions. They chose a simple, Microsoft Windows-based TMS that allowed them to manage these simple tasks – but not much more. As their business grew, they were managing hundreds of loads a month with more complex customer requirements. Their TMS’s lack of features began to hamper their ability to add staff, carriers, and customers. As the company grew, actions that were cumbersome became error-prone bottlenecks for them. For example, posting 5 loads a day to load boards wasn’t fun, but it was manageable. As they grew, Royal Supply Chain had multiple people posting 30+ loads each day to multiple load boards. They weren’t able to efficiently keep track of the loads without logging into the different load boards – causing them to miss key interactions with carriers and negatively impacting their ability to deliver on the White Glove Service commitment they make to their customers.
Decision Making Process
Royal Supply Chain knew a change had to be made. Their TMS is the hub of all their operations, and its lack of features and poor usability was slowing their team down. They began thinking through criteria of what the “perfect” TMS would be to help their business grow to the next level.
Their new TMS had to be full-featured but still be very easy for their team to use . They also understood that this was going to be difficult to find. Other freight brokers and 3PLs had told them horror stories of how difficult some of the freight industry’s leading TMS’s were to setup, maintain, and use for their teams. They vowed to not choose a TMS that required a massive investment in people, training, and process just to get up and running.
A new TMS with new features would require new skills and new processes. The TMS switch would be a short-term disruption for their business, and Royal Supply Chain understood that a TMS vendor’s ability to provide efficient and effective customer support would be essential for their migration and long-term success. When their team had questions or problems occurred, they wanted to receive quick responses and resolutions to issues.
Royal Supply Chain needed a transportation management system that had a smart integration strategy . It needed to integrate with all the various load boards they used. Posting loads to multiple boards directly from within the system was essential, but just as important, they needed to be able to see all the associated data about their loads in a single place. Their team members had wasted too much time looking in various systems and spreadsheets to understand what was happening with each load. Additionally, they desperately needed the ability to integrate with their EDI customers. Not having this capability resulted in them not being able to provide superior service to their growing customer base.
Royal Supply Chain understood that an advanced TMS would be an investment, but they also weren’t willing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in licenses and services on a system. Their new TMS needed to be able to justify its cost by providing immediate productivity gains for their team. They also wanted to minimize the time they would be running the two systems in tandem since doing so would a) require them to pay two fees, and b) cause their team to lose productivity because they were working in two systems.
With this criteria, Royal Supply Chain felt they were well-equipped to find a TMS that would help their business scale and prepare them for the next phase of growth.
Royal Supply Chain began researching vendor websites to find TMS’s that claimed to address their feature requirements. After compiling a list of TMS vendors, they received software demonstrations so they could understand if the actual solution matched the marketing materials presented on their websites. Some vendors were immediately disqualified because their product’s user interface was antiquated and obviously difficult to use.
If a TMS passed the feature and user experience tests, Royal Supply Chain asked what a migration to their system would look like. They were able to remove more vendors from consideration because vendors’ migration and onboarding processes were excessively long, expensive, and full of software customization requirements.
Finally, they asked about the cost to run the system and how difficult it would be for their team to operate and manage the system. With this question, nearly all the remaining vendors on their list fell. Most TMS providers were just too expensive to justify the value they provided, had a history of providing inferior customer service, or they required Royal Supply Chain to hire experts to manage the system.
The TMS Solution
The tools available in this software are far superior to our previous TMS, which has allowed us to move forward exponentially as our business grows. Adding velocity and precision to our daily tasks has been one of our greatest results of utilizing BrokerPro.
Royal Supply Chain’s TMS decision became obvious – BrokerPro from Infinity Software Solutions gave them everything they needed and more. Franky Argonza , Senior Vice President, from Royal Supply Chain states, “Switching to BrokerPro was smooth and supported fully by the developers and programmers. I would normally keep the previous software running concurrently, but this wasn’t necessary when transitioning to BrokerPro. The tools available in this software are far superior to our previous TMS, which has allowed us to move forward exponentially as our business grows. BrokerPro allows my staff to better utilize their time to be more efficient in their daily tasks. Integrating with Load Boards has allowed us to save time when reaching out to partner carriers. Integrating with EDI partners has also eliminated clerical errors and saved countless hours in clerical work. Adding velocity and precision to our daily tasks has been one of our greatest results of utilizing BrokerPro.”
In Summary
By choosing BrokerPro as their TMS, Royal Supply Chain was able to upgrade their technology stack, enjoy significant efficiency gains, and enable their future growth with minimal disruptions to their team. As they discovered, due diligence is important when making decisions about core systems like a TMS. Through the process, though, they learned that finding the right vendor with which to partner doesn’t have to be a leap of faith. The right TMS partner should provide the right mix of software features, cost benefits, and immediate productivity gains to make the switch worthwhile. Moreover, a TMS vendor should be fanatical about delivering excellent customer service and support. Royal Supply Chain found a tremendous partner in Infinity Software Solutions, and they now have the right platform with BrokerPro to enable their next phase of exponential growth.
