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Hey, good morning, good afternoon, good evening, wherever you may be.

Scott Luden here with you on supply chain now.

Got an excellent show here today, folks.

We're diving into proven ways to take your multi division shipping operations to entirely new levels.

Hey, got some questions for you.

Would you like to gain more efficiencies and take out friction in your shipping operations?

How about leveraging automation to make it easier to both delight your customers as well as make your team members days easier and more successful?

Yes, please.

Hey, are you interested in innovative, unified technology platforms that offer optimization opportunities for the entire transportation lifecycle?

Well, hey, if any of those questions speak to you, then you're in the right place.

We're going to be tackling all this and a whole bunch more as I'm joined by a couple of business leaders making things happen in their organizations and out in industry today.

So stay tuned for a great show.

Hey, two quick things before we bring in our esteemed panelists.

Number one, hey, let us know what you think.

And secondly, if you enjoyed today's show, be sure to share it with a friend or your network.

They'll be glad you did.

Sharing is indeed caring.

All right, want to welcome in our outstanding panel here today, starting with Reza, Tommy Gesmerati, a director of supply chain from a leading company in the outdoor sporting goods industry.

And backed by proper demand, our friend Shannon Valencourt, CEO with rate links.

Hey.

Hey, Reza, Tommy, how you doing?

Very well.

It's a rainy day here in central Illinois, but it's still beautiful, right?

Hey, we're with you.

We got some rain out here in Georgia and we got more on the way, so.

But great to see you here today.

And Shannon, welcome back.

How you doing?

I'm doing good.

How about you?

Wonderful, wonderful man.

We're, we're watching our Falcons fight valiantly.

We may touch on NFL another in a second or two here, but it's better than last year and that's kind of where I want to start.

So before we get into, we got a full show here today.

Gonna offer up some brilliant nuggets and actual insights with our global audience.

But I want to start with a fun warm up question because in our pre show conversation, Rezutami, we learned that you've been running triathlons and marathons for some 20 years.

I believe it's taken you, like, eleven different states in your competitions.

Right.

And you've just run your third half, Ironman.

So tell us about that, if you.

Yeah, so I did Madison 70.3 Ironman event.

Phenomenal course.

Out of all the courses I've done, Madison is one of the best ones.

Right.

Shannon's from.

Used to live in Madison.

He can speak, but.

Right.

You swim in Lake Manoma.

Right.

You have your transition at the manoma center.

Right.

Andrew Lord Wright building.

Beautiful.

Right.

And then you ride through Madison, go through the hills just outside of, you know, in central Wisconsin.

Beautiful course.

And you can.

It smell.

Even smells like Wisconsin.

You ride past all the dairies.

Right, right.

So, and then, and then, and then the run course is along the lake.

Absolutely beautiful.

And there's all the spectators.

And it happened to be game day.

Right.

Wisconsin was hosting a game day.

So everyone is dressed out, you know, in Badger red along the thing.

Cheering.

I mean, it was just.

It was just a phenomenal event.

The weather was great.

It was in the low seventies, so it was one of the best 70.3s I've run and probably top three triathlons I participated in, like I said.

You said eleven states, so.

And you.

You met your goals, you surpassed your goals.

Yes.

And it sounds like a beautiful experience.

Hey, I'm moving to Wisconsin.

After that you just shared.

I'm Wisconsin tomorrow.

Excellent resident, Tommy.

I can't wait to dive more.

I gotta get some tips from you so I can get in.

Fight.

Yeah, fight and shape.

But Shannon, Valley court, on a different note, you know, we've enjoyed a lot of different conversations over the years.

We've certainly talked plenty of football.

And of course, you're one of the biggest, uh, Chicago Bears fans in our network here, in our community here.

And I gotta say, they have been competitive as the NFL seasons in full swing.

Reza, Tommy just mentioned football and the mighty Badgers there in Wisconsin.

But the Bears have been fighting.

They're one and two, but they've been in every single game.

What are we going to see from the Bears the rest of the year, you think?

Boy, I don't know.

I mean, they've been in every game because they have a top defense.

I think they have a championship caliber defense.

Now, the question is, will the offense become at least mediocre?

And I think it just starts with the line.

If they can just get that line fixed.

So I read something the other day, you know, overreactions from week three right.

And, you know, should they have kept Justin Fields and.

No, that's.

That's an overreaction.

That's no reaction.

Williams threw for what, 360 some yards this weekend.

And that's more than fields ever threw for any game.

And it's only his third game in the NFL.

Right.

Already did it.

So it's like he's the right fit now.

It just comes down to that line and everything, I think, points to the coaches.

I think they're the men.

You look at that division, everyone is.

Everybody's working.

I mean, it's like they got great coaches.

Except for in Chicago, I feel like.

So either, you know, they're going to fix it.

Either they'll figure it out and get it fixed, right, or maybe they'll actually get a new coach.

But, hey, I told y'all, I told y'all.

Shannon Valley court, he doesn't fake the funk on a nasty dunk.

He is a big time Bears fan.

They gotta be better, man.

Yeah, well, you know, I like your comment there because, of course, football, you got a good offensive line, good defensive line, man.

You can, you can make special runs.

So we'll see.

And that Caleb Williams, in his third NFL game, just three, three games in, he looks like to be a special talent.

So we shall see.

All right, so, Shannon and Rezatami, I'm looking forward to a great conversation here today.

Okay.

We got a lot to get into here today.

Rezutami and Shannon, I want to start with one of my favorite starting points.

That's offering context as we get into the conversation.

So, Reza, Tommy, if you would, to share that context, not level setting with our audience, tell us a little bit more about yourself and a little bit more about your company.

Yeah, so I'll just start with myself.

I've been doing transportation for over 20 years.

My first transportation job was actually in the 2002 Winter Olympics, dispatching buses.

I was a transportation supervisor.

Right.

So I like to joke I've done transportation at the Olympic level in Salt Lake City.

So that's fabulous.

And I'm actually looking forward to maybe they'll let me go back and do transportation in 2020, 2036 when the Olympics go back there.

That's right.

Love it.

Right, right.

So I've worked at an ocean carrier company doing customer service, import customer service, export customer service at steamship line level.

I also worked at a freight forwarder for four years, doing distribution and doing air freight and ocean freight forwarding.

So I really cut my teeth in ocean and freight forwarding experience, and I took that to a large consumer goods company, and it's changed names over the years.

But, you know, we were talking about football.

So one of the first things that I did and actually how I first got involved with railings was with Riddell, the football helmets.

Okay, right, right.

So, so that was railing, one of railings first customers back in the day.

And we used to make the football helmets in our plant.

And, you know, a lot of people think, oh, it'd be great to do all the NFL helmets.

And that was.

But if you think about it, there aren't a lot of NFL players compared to high school and college.

Right.

But the biggest customers were high schools and in colleges across the country.

So one of the other customers we had, we talked sports was, it was the Easton baseball bats.

So we used to do east, we used to do Easton.

So, and over M and a my company's morphs, and let's just say that, that I'm in a very wide range of consumer sporting goods.

If you were to go to like a dick sporting goods, a lot of our products are like an index sporting goods or REI.

So, and I like to say what I handle, I'm responsible for global deliver.

So I'm responsible for everything from the factory to the customer consumer, whether the customer is as a big box retail or it's someone ordering something to show up on their door.

Yep.

And everything in between, whether it's on a truck, plane or boat.

Wow, that's a big old plate.

I have used your products, as we talked about pre show, from spotting birds to surviving out in the desert, getting my water and my hydration.

And it's a fascinating company.

And I love also that you mentioned, Shannon.

It was cool that he mentioned two big brands in his previous, his career that everybody knows, and Rydell, the helmet company, and of course, Easton the bat.

I've had, I've missed at more baseballs and softballs using Easton bats.

Any other bat in my background, sure.

But Reza, Tommy, thank you for sharing more context about your journey and what you're doing now, especially as you're in that global supply chain leadership role.

Shannon, switching gears.

You know, as I mentioned a minute ago, we've had the good fortune of having all sorts of conversations with you going back several years, but some of our newer audience members that may be here, let's make sure they are familiar with a little bit of your background.

So tell us a little bit more, Shannon.

Well, let's see.

I've been, I've been in the industry for a little over 30 years now.

Wow.

Yeah.

I'm getting a lot older.

You know.

Started back in the day before you could track packages.

You know, back then, you know, the old thing, you had to walk uphill.

Well, on the shipping side, you ship stuff and you couldn't track it.

You just kind of hoped open a prayer there is how it used to work back in the day.

Also spent some time working on WMS.

So I've always been on the implementation side, more technical side of things before I started rate lengths back in zero two and.

Yeah, and that's where I met Reza.

We had, Riddell was one of the early customers in Illyria, Ohio.

So I do have a Redell helmet at home with the bears.

Okay.

Sitting up on my shelf and we sit there and we have the little mantle that we pray to every Sunday before the game.

So hopefully it's gonna start working here soon.

I bet it's tough to be making a product that big old 300 pound bodies meet each other and they're cracking all the time.

Extra quality in those, those helmets, huh?

Rosatomi.

Yeah.

You know, one thing is we used to work at the plant that would make them.

What was interesting is that the off the field helmets had a higher, slightly higher standard than on the field.

Interesting because if you're spending like $300 on a replica helmet and, for example, you were going to get it signed.

Like, if you were going to get it signed by Jim McMahon and you were going to spend a $1,000 on it, you'd really want that to look pristine.

Yeah.

Whereas if it's on the field, it's going to get dinged up.

Right.

You're more concerned about the safety versus how clean it look.

Pristine.

It looks interesting.

Jim McMahon, that's a throwback.

Yeah.

The headbands and all.

Back in the eighties.

Shannon Valen court some special teams there.

Yeah, he lives out here.

Oh, really?

Okay.

Yeah.

So before we moved out here, my wife and I were out here on vacation.

And we're going for a walk and there's an open house down the street.

She's like, hey, let's just go check it out.

So we go down to the house and they're walking us through.

We get to the backyard and they're like, hey, I don't know if you're a football fan or not, but the neighbor next door happens to be Jim McMahon.

And my wife was all freaked out.

She's like, oh, shit.

Or, oh, shoot, we're gonna.

He might buy this house just because of the neighbors.

So it's like, so I literally know exactly where Jim McMahon lives?

Oh, the one and only.

Far away.

But I've never seen him okay around, but he's a.

His house is just in Scottsdale, down the street.

Well, hey, when I'm out there for that event in October, we're gonna have to go scouting to see if he's hosting any beers get togethers from.

From back in the day.

No kidding.

But regardless, Shannon, folks, if y'all can't tell, we like football a little bit around here between Shannon, whereas Tommy and I.

But we got a lot to get into specifically on three ways to unlock efficiency.

Automate, how to best automate your multi division shipping operations.

So, with that said, as we kind of get more into the topic, Reza, Tommy, with your scale or with the scale of your supply chain operations across multiple business brands, which you were talking about earlier, I'm sure there's a ton of challenges that you ran into when you first joined the company, right?

A little whiles back.

So if you could share a few examples of what wasn't working as well as you would have liked to have them working back then.

Yeah.

So going back to the.

Staying with the football analogy, right?

Yeah.

When we first implemented, we went live with Riddell in our facility in Illinois.

There was some automation and there was something.

We're shipping shoulder pads and the algorithms that these packing estimates based on the cube of a shoulder pad.

Right.

And the shoulder pad is mostly empty because it's just like a shell.

Right, right.

So let's say someone ordered six shoulder pads.

Well, it would plan massive boxes because the system didn't know that you could stack or nest shoulder pads.

Right.

And the same kind of goes if you do like cups or baseball caps, anything that can nest.

Right.

So one of the challenges that the system was saying that you're going to need all these big boxes and your shipping cost is going to be, you know why, when really you can nest them and it could fit in a smaller box and your shipping cost would be a lot less.

Right.

So one of the things that rate links did for us was helping do custom code to know that if it saw certain items that could be nested, like shoulder pads, you could plan for the smaller box, which would also save on shipping cost.

Ah.

So, you know, I wonder how many folks out there we've all worn a.

Lots of us have worn shoulder pads, but how many of us have stopped to think about what it's like shipping shoulder pads?

I love that analogy.

And I bet my hunch there, Rezatami, is based on what you'll learn together is that you were able to take that information, that new, better, more efficient way of shipping it and use that to better rate shop is my hunch.

For sure.

For sure.

And I'm going to jump ahead a little bit, too.

Yeah.

So.

Right, because you want the smaller box.

Right.

To optimize shipping cost.

Right.

But if you also think about the different types of customers that could receive these things, right.

I mean, for example, you can buy, should deposit exporting goods.

They're going to have a, they're going to have a different kind of reception process to, you know, Joe's football shop on Main street.

Right.

So we want to optimize shipping costs by shipping smaller boxes, for sure.

But we also want to make sure there's a good customer experience.

Right.

We want to make sure that the TMS and the business rules shipping to like a retail store who can accept pallets of goods is different than, you know, the sporting goods shore on Main Street.

Main street may not have a receiving dock or maybe in an old part of town in Pennsylvania or Ohio, and they have no way of getting an LTL truck with the liftgate to there.

So we want to make sure that we're delivering parcel to them.

Right.

So the one thing that their railings can do is set business rules for specific customers and ship to locations that we don't.

We take the person out of it that it's programmed, you know, that Jack's sporting goods on Main street can't get a lift gate with a pallet that we have to ship them parcel.

And you know what parcel carrier x does better than y.

And they're going to request that they ship with, with xdem.

And having systems that take, again, the human error element out of it and program takes, makes my life easier.

Right.

And the customer makes your team's life easier, delights your customers because they're getting the product and the way they need to get it.

Two of the things that you spoke to there, Reza, Tommy and Shannon bring you in here is we heard, taking a lot of the manual operation out of the process.

Right.

Study after study.

Shannon, we talked about this a lot because I think we picked a Stanford study that looked at like, I think nine could have been 19 errors per hundred opportunities.

I can't remember that.

But anyway, you'd be surprised.

Everyone out there, how many manual errors would that rate?

That what those rates look like.

And then the second thing that Reza, Tommy touched on and applied is having all these systems that are talking with each other effectively.

Right.

And so, Shannon Valancourt, when you hear Reza Tommy talk about shipping shoulder pads, those specific examples, but also some of those greater themes that apply to any, no matter what you're shipping, you've been in the game for quite some time, as you put it.

You broke our 30 year rule earlier in your introduction.

But how common are these issues that Rezatami is bringing up here today?

We run into it all the time.

And what Reza was talking about with the nesting of the shoulder pads, all that stuff, that's typically not a TMS function, but that's where we made it, a TMS function to essentially carbonize and know that here's how you're going to pack those items together and then based on where it's going to, where there's specific rules, things like that, because we have other customers that have similar type of products where they're just hard to cartoonize.

Shoulder pads are one thing.

Because of the nesting, you've got other types of objects out there that are just hard to cart.

Nice.

Even, even back in the east and bell sports days when you had baseball bats, hockey sticks, things like that, those are always the hard things to figure out how they're going to be packed.

They're not nice little cubes.

Knowing where you're shipping to, for example, Dick's.

We have another customer that ships to Dick's, and the maximum box size is 48 inches long.

That's it.

They will not accept anything longer than 48 inches.

So you have to take that into account as you're running through these rules and optimizing everything.

So that's where, just like Reza said, whether you're shipping to a big box retail, they're going to have one set of rules compared to just some regular sporting goods store on Main street in Randoul, Illinois.

It's different.

And that's where we have to be able to handle all that stuff because our customers are shipping everywhere.

Going back to your earlier part of your response there, Shannon, I love something you said.

You said that it wasn't typically a TMS problem, but you made it one, which gave you all your collective efforts the opportunity to solve a pressing business issue.

So I love that.

An operational issue.

Okay, so, rezatomic, now, we talked about automating rate shopping.

We talked about taking a lot of the manual efforts out, make, you know, really help to equip our team by focus on more fulfilling tasks.

Right.

Automate a lot of blocking and tackling.

Right.

And make their days more fulfilling and rewarding and more successful.

What other manual processes have you wanted to automate since you first joined the organization.

Yeah.

So we have lots of, like, we were talking about unique customers, right.

From a big sock retail to a store on mainstream.

You know, we sell, we hear the term omnichannel thrown around a lot.

Shipping.

Omnichannel.

Right.

Shipping to someone's house, you know, third party drop shipping, big box retail, you know, small, small, regional chains all have different needs.

And when you have so many customers spread around all North America and globally.

But it's really hard.

And every customer has a different route guide and shipping requirements.

Right.

And to be able to program that and have it be, have a platform like rate links that's robust, that you can either do it by a customer code versus shipped to.

Right.

Because you could have a small chain with eight stores that has a rule, and you want to apply it to all eight, but maybe one of them is in a mall and that may be something different.

So you do it by ship to.

So again, the world is a complex place, and shipping that is also complex.

So, again, being able to program all those small, intricate things that customers needs, again, is super helpful.

And it still doesn't cover everything, but it covers a lot of it.

Yeah, that's right.

There's no magic wand out there.

Shannon and Reza, Tommy, if y'all have one, let me know.

I'd like to invest in it, and we'll sell it to the world together.

But Shannon, he touched on a lot of things there, of course, all the different requirements that different customers have taken, a lot of manual things, customizing when you've got to customize in this ever challenging world.

But what he started to imply on there, and what he and he spoke about in a previous response was having the TMS and the freight, audit and payment all integrated in one app, which keeps all your data in sync as it's connected to other platforms that are involved in day to day operations, WMS, ERP, and other things.

My hunch is it's a pretty common request to have all of those platforms I mentioned integrated, working in harmony in a perfect symphony out there across the organization.

Your thoughts there, Shannon?

Well, yeah, I think everyone wants to integrate it.

I think the challenge everybody runs into is it's hard to integrate until you find a platform like ours that actually has it all integrated.

There's a lot of connecting that I think occurs out there, but there's not a lot of integrating that we see.

And by getting it all integrated together, what you're gonna be able to do is really unlock a lot of value.

So you're gonna get the pieces of information that you are missing on that freight invoice side that's gonna allow you to make better decisions more long term.

So, you know, if you're going out and trying to make carrier changes or understand why a shipment was done a certain way without having that TMS data, you're not gonna know.

You're just going to be looking at a shipment and question, well, why didn't they ship it a different way?

And it's, well, it couldn't because of the rules that you have.

The customer said, here's your options to ship to us.

So did you follow those rules, yes or no?

And that way you're not chasing down a potential savings of some kind that you can never get.

And I think that's a, that's the nice value of having it truly integrated, is you're finally going to see what really went into the decision making of that shipment.

And that way there's no more questions around it.

And now you can confidently move forward with your decisions that you're making on any carrier.

Choices, rate changes that are happening, things like that.

So it's a nice, everyone has it on their wish list, but few platforms actually enable it to bring it to fruition, is what I heard you say there, Shannon.

I think the other thing, as you were describing, when you don't have that, you're just kind of searching in the dark.

You don't have all the information you need to manage effectively day in and day out.

And I think in talking with Reza Tommy earlier, you know, in the previous state, it was manual to connect order to shipping costs, shipping costs of freight invoices, and even verifying contracted rates to invoices to make sure it's all accurate.

Right.

And this provided an outstanding opportunity, if I understand it correctly, at Rezatomi, to automate much of that.

Right, to manage better.

Right?

Yeah.

And this is gonna get kind of into the weeds.

But one of the things that, when you have it all together is, for example, if you have two different product types with two different cost centers and gl codes in the same box, if you want to split the shipping costs and how you allocate to the different businesses or cost centers, having that all integrated helps because it can say, product a was 70% of the volume, product b was 30%, allocate the freight cost 70 30, or whatever that is.

Right.

In businesses that are, in companies that are doing stuff like this, you want to integrate, because again, it takes all the works done on the front end not after you get the bill.

Excellent point.

Shannon.

Quick comment on that because I want to, that kind of sounds like a bit of a special request, and I'm going to ask Reza, Tommy MOre about that in just a second.

But Shannon, any comment on what he just shared there?

No, I think that's, that's really the, the holy grail that a lot of people try to find is it's the cost allocation.

That way they can finally allocate freight cost to an item so they can get freight as a percentage of sales, you know, because with the different products that they're shipping, shoulder pads, helmets, you know, when they had baseball bats, things like that, they all cost, you know, very different to ship out there.

So how can you allocate that for cost correctly to that product?

And that's where on the TMS side, what we're doing is we're actually capturing the general ledger code for that particular item.

That way when the invoice comes in, it matches up and then we can allocate that freight cost to the correct GL code at the correct amount.

That way from a reporting and a financial perspective, they now have just a different level of reporting that they're able to do to really understand how items are costing them for freight cost.

And I think that's, I mean, we see that a lot across our customers and that's the best way to do.

It, being able to better manage profitability and just know it's good business versus not so good business.

You know, if we don't have accurate data and make all these connections that both of you are speaking to, we just can't manage as effectively and as in the know as, as really 2024 demands from our organization.

So a minute ago, Reza Tommy, actually, a couple times so far in our conversation, you've talked about very specific examples that may have included some special requests from clients on how to ship the products back to the shoulder pads.

I can tell you we've done probably 3000 plus podcast live streams and webinars here at supply chain.

Now we have yet to ever talk about shipping shoulder pads.

So runs the time that you new horizons here, I'm just dialing in on that.

So in any business, any sector, in any industry, there's always special requests from clients out there of how they want you to ship their products.

So how were you previous state?

How were you handling those special requests in the past compared to now?

Reza Tom well, it was all manual, right?

It was all manual and it was left up to the operators to figure it out and then once everything was packed, then they would go to, like a shipping manifest, and they would enter the details and it would tell you how to ship it.

Where when you have a tool integrated, one of the big things that the railings has this plan based on it, as soon as the order, before it's even sent to the wagon at the same time, but simultaneously, when the order sent to the warehouse we're picking, it's also sent to rate links, and they estimate the volume, the number of boxes that it's going to take.

So you can estimate and predict the best way to ship it.

Right.

And then it also tell, you know, estimates how many boxes.

And if you need to go back and check and audit, the warehouse should have done it in three boxes.

Well, why did they ship six?

And you can go to the warehouse, say, hey, right.

So it pushes that upstream to help manage and process, right.

It lets the system do it instead of what I'm hearing, and y'all correct me if I'm wrong because of Tommy and Shannon, but rather than leaning into a culture where we reward the superheroes that put their cape on and make something happen manually, rather than enable that, which is, which adds so much more friction and stress and inconsistency oftentimes operations.

Right.

To a team that really wants to do the best, and if they've got to do it manually, they're going to do it.

But let's let the system and let, let technology do what they do best.

You let the humans focus on higher tasks that don't take their personal time and attention.

Shannon Valancourt, your quick comment there, before I move on to the next question.

Yeah, I mean, the challenge that we had with, with Resa and their requirements is a little non traditional in terms of what they were looking at most of the time we put in these rules, it's pure rate shopping, where it's like, if this carrier is a penny cheaper, pick that carrier.

And with them, we also had to take into account handling.

So within their warehouse, because of the automation that they have in there with all the conveyors and the way they're set up, they're actually more efficient to handle parcel than they are LTl.

So that's where it would favor parcel, even if it was a little bit more expensive because of the handling, it just, they were that much more efficient in terms of the personal, you know, the personnel and how they have to manage the putting it on a pallet and the time it takes and all that stuff.

So our rate shop actually had to take all of that into account as well.

So it wasn't quite as cut and dry as just, hey, it's going to Dick's sporting goods.

Here's the list of carriers that you could use.

Just pick the least costly one.

We also did take into account package counts.

And, you know, once it hits a certain number of packages, it's like, well, that's much more efficient, you know, going LTL or it's much more efficient going parcel.

So we can handle it being a little bit more expensive, right.

With a parcel carrier versus LTl, et cetera, et cetera.

So it's like that was very different type of rules that we had to put in place for them.

And it really helped drive, I think, their processes internally.

Cause their whole warehouse was built from the ground up for this.

I mean, they were a customer before they created that Warehouse.

They used to be very manual picks everywhere, and then all of a sudden they created that state of the art warehouse and we had to change some rules and that's what we were able to do for them.

So I appreciate you sharing that, Shannon.

It begs the question.

Right.

Cause you're talking automating business rules, common and unique, that will help make warehouse warehousing, shipping, freight auditing processes so much more efficient and accurately and accurate and enable management to manage better.

So from our past discussions, though, I know one of the first questions that you always get from shippers is how long does it take to integrate all of my systems and set up our unique business rules?

How long?

How long?

Tell me, how long is that?

Is that the first question you get?

And can you speak to that a little bit here?

We get more than just how long.

It's, can you really do it?

But it's, the actual connecting of systems is nothing that difficult anymore to do.

Really what it comes down to is just layering all the rules and doing all the testing.

So how long always depends on the scope.

So that's where we have to understand that first before we can give an answer to that.

But it can be done faster than you think.

As long as you guys are prepared to do the testing and have the right amount of intensity, it can be done pretty quickly.

You know, six to eight weeks is not uncommon.

Sometimes it can go to twelve weeks.

Again, depending on the complexity of what we're doing, that's going to really dictate how long it takes.

I was writing down six to eight, Shannon.

So we're going to lock that one in.

I mean, it certainly we've done it.

We've done it plenty of times in that amount of time.

And you know, what I always try to tell the customer is, let's, you know, give me all your rules that you can think of, because that's usually the limiting factor, is there's a lot of manual stuff they do that they just do.

Nobody remembers.

They can't really think of.

And we put it in the system, they start their testing, and then that usually jogs their memory on a few more things, and then we'll add it.

Because the way that we're built and the way that we deploy everything is, it always comes down to an iterative process.

We're going to start with what you give us.

It's better than what you had, and then we're going to continually iterate and make those additions to it because business changes, too.

You're going to have a rule that comes up in three months, six months, a year that didn't exist when we implement it.

So not just about that first implementation.

We have to make sure that they can continually work with this system and evolve as they evolve, because they're also going to come up with better ideas.

I mean, Reza has come up with changes that we've made because he's come up with better ideas on how to move the freight.

And it's like, we have to be able to do that.

I mean, going back to one of the examples we've used here today, Reza, Tommy and Shannon, is helmets.

Helmets.

In the last few years, they've gone through new regulations at all levels.

If I'm not mistaken, bats, bat sizes.

Oh, the certifications.

Yes.

Resettam.

How fast the ball comes off.

Bats have changed, right?

Yeah.

So at Easton, quick side tangent, because I think people find this interesting.

So they have a.

We had a cannon that shoot launched a baseball at the bat to see how fast the ball came off the bat, right.

And there was regulations, right.

And every time there was a new regulation change with little League, and I know this, having three boys and having to buy new bats, anytime those regulation changes, like Easton sales went up, we were air freight.

Yep, yep, yep.

We were air freighting all the bats because, right.

They had to be in the store in time for size.

Right.

It comes down to player safety, right.

At one point with the composites, they were coming off faster off the bath, and they were being launched.

Yes.

Well, I gotta add, as your lifelong mediocre church league softball third baseman and shortstop, I am appreciative.

Appreciative of the slower speeds coming off bats at a hard enough time when it's moving 20 miles an hour off the bat.

So, but I love that example.

I love these universal examples.

I think a lot of folks, whether they played sports or the kids play sports, can relate to and thinking about the shipping and just, just all the supply chain activities behind.

So, rezatomy, we've covered a lot of ground here.

We've talked about more than three ways, probably about how you've made your supply chain more efficient.

We've talked about automating rate shopping successfully and accurately.

Right.

We've talked about automating and customizing the special requests, the regular workflows and the business rules which touch on a second ago.

All that more and then all of that kind of rolls up into the wish list that everybody has that Shannon talked about.

Everybody wishes for it.

Not everybody can deliver.

But integrating technologies into a single platform to not just optimize here and there, but optimize the entire transportation life cycle.

And you know, in this case of multi divisions.

Right?

Like Reza, Tom, your organization, it's not just like ABC company benefits or this business unit benefits, it's the enterprise.

And gosh, the economy's a scale.

There is the gift that keeps on giving for sure.

So let's talk about returns.

Are there any returns, outcomes, results, anything you can share?

Rezatami, on all the work that you've already accomplished.

Yeah.

And the biggest thing is happy your customers.

Right.

And one of the metrics that I like to judge is it's a good thing when our director of customer service and the customer service folks aren't coming to me.

Right.

It's a good thing when the finance folks are not saying, hey, your costs are out of line with expectations.

Right?

So not having those things are the wins because nothing's going to be perfect.

You're always going to have expedited shipping, you're always going to have special requests.

No one really cares about how much things cost if they don't have their stuff.

So that's my not that costs are important.

Costs are really important.

But the first thing is to make sure that the customer has their stuff and they have a good positive experience.

Then you can drill down on the costs.

And to Shannon's point, when you have the integrated system with the GL cost center, with the rate shopping results or exceptions, then you can start managing that better.

And that's what drives efficiency down the road.

I love that.

That's one of the common themes we've talked about here because not only must we enable our teams to do great work in their roles and make that easier, easier for them.

But we as managers and leaders, have to continuously find new ways of managing and leading more effectively and better.

Especially, as both of you all point out, the game continues to change, as well as the solutions and technologies and new innovative practices also change, enabling a different way to tell folks why we shouldn't always do it the way we've always done it.

So if I can, Rezutami, tell me if I'm wrong, but what I heard you say, because we talked about, you know, I'm asking about outcomes.

What I'm hearing you say is, since y'all began working, uh, your customers are indeed more delighted.

I bet you'll have a delighted index.

Maybe, uh, your CFO's are tend to be, our CFO tends to be a little bit happier, or CFO's maybe in this case.

And then the director of customer service, who probably, uh, has all sorts of conversations with customers, good, bad and indifferent.

Right.

That's the best nature of their job.

I bet.

They seem to be having happier and better days.

Is that right, Reza?

Tom, happier, yeah.

There's still issues, right?

But being able in any business.

Right?

But another thing that railing substance do is there's a log that explains how it got to the point how it shipped that way.

So being able to internally say, hey, when it says, why did it ship this way versus that way?

To be able to go with, hey, this is why they're like, oh, it wasn't just an accident, love.

That's the question, right?

Everybody wants to know why, right?

That's, that's, uh.

I love how I'm glad you added that.

Being able to answer that question in a way that, uh, makes sense, number one.

Number two furthers the relationship with customers, right.

That's one of the north stars here for sure.

All right, so, Shannon, and thank you, Reza, Tommy, for sharing that.

We're looking forward to having you back on.

And we'll, we'll give folks an update of the continued journey that you are having.

But don't go anywhere.

We got a couple more questions for you, Shannon.

We're talking outcomes, gains, results.

Are you able to share any other efficiency gains, cost savings, you know, how what you are doing, what it enables your other clients to accomplish new heights, you know, using integrated platforms again for both tms and freight, audit and payment.

Yeah, I mean, one of the, probably the biggest efficiencies that people gain is around headcount.

You know, they don't have to worry about bringing in additional people, maybe during peak seasons, things like that, because of the automation that's in there.

On the freight audit and payment side, the GL coding that automatically happens.

Again, it allows you to do more with less.

So you don't have to have a large amount of people in the department to do the freight payment.

You don't need a large amount of people in the department to do the shipping.

So that way you can really focus on putting people where you really need them to move the product through the warehouse to do what people really should be doing, not these repetitive tasks that the system is doing anymore.

You've got those savings, you've got some hard dollar savings on freight.

Some customers are able to save upwards of 1012 15% just by automating that rate shopping and always picking the right carrier, then by having it all integrated.

You can also see, like Reza was saying, why something happened.

So if somebody didn't follow the rule or rule wasn't followed, you can see why what happened.

And was it a bad thing or not a bad thing because at the end of the day you got to get product out to your customer.

That's right.

So that's the exceptions that occur.

But at least you now can really monitor it and keep those exceptions down to the real exceptions, not what I think are sometimes the fake exceptions.

So you start applying these types of savings, you know, 1012 percent on top of your freight spend.

That's a, that can be a large number for a lot of customers.

And, and then the either, you know, prevention of, you know, adding headcount to do certain tasks, you know, that allows this to be a much more scalable operation for a lot of companies.

So that way they can grow when they need to without having to hire a lot of people.

I think that's, that's really where you can get a lot of opportunities out of a system like this.

Excellent point.

And folks, stick around for just a second.

We're going to share an additional case study from a previous guest at one of these conversations here at supply chain now.

So stay tuned for that.

Reza.

Tommy, so I got to ask you, when's your next triathlon or half marathon or what's your.

Yeah, I'm doing a six hour endurance mountain bike race Saturday with my son.

So there's local mountain bike park and as many lapses you can do in 6 hours.

So my oldest and I are going to do that this Saturday, assuming the weather goes.

That is awesome, man.

And I've seen pictures of you on social rappelling down the grand tetons.

I think it was, man, you, I'll tell you if it's supply chain by day and conquering the outdoors by night, you, you stay on the road, I tell you.

Yeah, yeah.

I love it.

So let's make sure folks know how to connect with our panelists here today.

We got it.

We got some resources from shannon, the rate links team we're going to cover in just a second.

But, rezutami, how can folks connect with you and, and talk shop with you after today's session?

Yeah.

So you can find me on LinkedIn.

Reza Tommy.

You can email me reza tommy at gmail.

Reza Tommy on yeah.

Reza Tommy on Twitter x.

Right.

So you're readily available with the challenge, whether they're folks ready to talk shop, talk supply chain, or if they want to.

I'll tell you, I really enjoy your sports product related supply chain background.

Fascinating.

We'll have to have you back and talk more about that.

Shannon, great to have you back, as always.

I'm looking forward to the big event we're going to be sharing in just a moment.

But how can folks track Shannon Valancourt and the rate leaks team down?

Always get us through LinkedIn or go to ratelinks.com, drop us a line anytime.

It is just that easy.

It's just that easy, folks.

You can also come out if you want to connect with Shannon and the rate links team on the move, come out to join us in Arizona at the Insight conference 2024.

It's coming up quick, I'll tell you, October 15 and 16th, but I bet a couple folks out there, if they want to join us, I bet Shannon Valancourt and the team will find, find some space.

It's gonna be a great time.

Lots of supply chain conversations, shipping conversations.

But also, I think we're gonna enjoy some top golf, some camaraderie, some great networking and presentations, and we are gonna be releasing the results and key takeaways from our TM tech survey 2024 that we have been collecting tons of intel from around global supply chain.

So appreciate everybody that happened to participate there.

And then one other thing.

We talked about results.

It's so important.

And I like what Shannon mentioned earlier, two, two key aspects of what they, how they work with teams like rezatomy and their organization is six to eight weeks.

So we're not talking a lumbering 18 month.

No, six, eight weeks.

And then the second thing that might get overlooked is the iterative nature of the relationship, because things are constantly evolving.

And while I bet this is just my take, Shannon, tell me if I'm wrong, but I bet there's some instant results.

And then because of the iterative nature of the partnership and the work together, there's ongoing new opportunities and results found.

Is that right, Shannon?

Oh, yeah.

It's just like wringing out the, you know, the towel.

You get it lot out right away.

But if you keep squeezing a little bit more in there, man.

A little bit more.

A little bit more.

Well, um, speaking of a lot more, how about check out this, their work with Pinterest.

We got, first off, the case study, about 12 million in LTl savings annually.

Goodness gracious.

We'll learn more about how that was accomplished via the case study and a great interview with Jim Flourish.

Jim was a great guest a couple months back.

Reza, Tommy was a great guest here today.

But they both speak to what goes into getting these eye popping results that just empowers the organization to tackle new heights.

So, resident Tommy, I can only imagine these things you're working on just roll up to power the organization to maybe on the most successful year yet here in 2024, is that right?

Yes, sir.

Awesome.

Big thanks to Rezutami Gazbarati, a director of supply chain from a leading company out there in the outdoor sporting goods industry.

Thanks so much for being here.

Reza Tomi, thank you.

Thank you.

You bet.

And Shannon Valencourt, as always, CEO with rate links.

Great to have you here.

Appreciate you bringing the conversations like this to us.

Thank you, guys.

And thank you, Reza.

Good talking with you as always.

Great conversation.

Appreciate y'all both.

We presented an incredible supply chain leadership use case here, right.

An example of things that are presented with opportunities that are out there waiting for all of us to change how business is done.

Our teams are ready for all of us to do just that.

So I encourage you to take one thing that Reza, Tommy and Shannon shared here today and put it into action.

It's all about deeds and I not words.

Big opportunities are there to be had.

And with all of that said on behalf of the entire team here at Supply chain now, hey, be sure to connect with our speakers, check out those resources, but most importantly, on behalf of the team, Scott Lewton, challenging you do good, give forward and be the change that's needed.

And we'll see you next time right back here at Supply chainow.

Thanks, everybody.

Thanks for being a part of our.

Supply chain now community.

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