Princeton TMX and Descartes MacroPoint™ – Functional Beverage Producer Transforms Operations with Integrated TMS and Real-Time Visibility
A leading functional beverage producer replaced manual transportation management practices with the cloud-based, multimodal Princeton TMX transportation management system (TMS) and Descartes MacroPoint™ freight visibility platform. With real-time visibility into shipments, the combined solution simplified, accelerated, and optimized the company’s transportation operations to increase productivity, improve accuracy, and enhance the customer experience while laying the foundation for profitable growth.
The Challenge: Manual Processes Thwart Efficiency
The functional beverage company moves upwards of 25,000 perishable and shelf-stable shipments annually across the U.S. via 10 distribution centers, leveraging a combination of reefer and dry van moves with a network of 30-50 carriers. With large retailers like Walmart, Target and Whole Foods relying on on-time deliveries, manual practices (e.g., printing/emailing documentation such as packing slips and bills of lading (BOLs), spreadsheet-based order tracking)—coupled with a lack of visibility into load coverage and freight status—were hindering efficiency, accuracy and the ability to provide a consistent, frictionless customer experience. Plus, without real-time analytics and deep-dive reporting, it was challenging to make data-driven transportation planning decisions and mitigate detention spending.
“We’ve slashed hours off our daily planning and dispatch tasks to book and cover more loads, faster and with less risk of errors. Going from being blind to real-time order and carrier visibility to over 90% visibility compliance—in conjunction with extensive data insights and reports—has been a gamechanger for delivery performance, helping us make better planning decisions and protect margins. Plus, the responsive customer service teams at both Princeton TMX and Descartes truly care about our success and are experts in their fields.”
Transportation Manager, Functional Beverage Company
The Solution: Automating Workflows Boosts Productivity
With the goal of eliminating costly labor-intensive and error-prone manual processes, the functional beverage company seamlessly integrated and deployed Princeton TMX’s cloud-based TMS and Descartes MacroPoint for real-time freight visibility.
By automating key processes like load building, tendering and carrier management, Princeton TMX addresses on-time-in-full (OTIF) challenges, reducing manual labor and human error while boosting efficiency to save hours—and even days—off routine processes. The company’s transportation manager noted that “dispatching manually used to take four to five hours. Now, on heavy days, we’re dispatching 200-300 loads within the hour.”
The solution also automates carrier selection (e.g., based on low cost or high service rating) and helps the company to increase profitability by lowering the cost-per-mile. With centralized data storage, the TMS is described as a one-stop-shop data manager: contracts, insurance, BOLs, and invoices are uploaded with easy access, helping the team stay on top of day-to-day operations, while automating processes to reduce the risk of error. For example, carriers get deactivated automatically if their insurance expires.
With over 90% tracking compliance amongst the company’s carrier network, Descartes MacroPoint streamlines the freight visibility workflow, simplifying load monitoring and tracking and providing predictive ETAs to help coordinate operations with accuracy—especially important for time-sensitive perishable orders: missing delivery windows for retail grocery customers can come with a high price.
Descartes MacroPoint sends real-time updates directly into the TMS allowing for an integrated user experience while also providing a control tower view and customer-facing updates. This enhances contingency planning and exception management capabilities, enabling the team to identify and mitigate issues in advance to prevent late deliveries, detention fees and retailer penalties. “Before deploying Descartes MacroPoint within our Princeton TMX environment,” the transportation manager explains, “visibility was non-existent. Now, we have detailed location data, so we know whether trucks are going to be on time and no longer have to rely on manual track-and-trace.
He adds, “Carriers prefer Descartes MacroPoint and our team loves the ease of use and data insights that help us keep carriers accountable—so it was an easy choice for us. And go-live was simple; all we had to do was supply our carrier list and Descartes and Princeton TMX did all the heavy lifting.”
The combined solution also provides granular data and accurate reporting that offer valuable insights into the company’s transportation network, which helps to reduce detention, identify rate trends and improve forecasting and performance. The finance team leverages reporting capabilities and TMS data to manage accruals, making sure carriers bill in the same month the load ships—instead of waiting for reports from carriers—and to determine accurate transportation spend to improve forecasting and track month-to-month trends.
The Results
Heightened Productivity
The company books more loads, faster, and with fewer errors, dispatching 200–300 loads/hour vs. manual practices that took 4–5 hours. Real-time load visibility eliminates manual tracking processes to save time, effort, and resources.
Smooth Rollout & Ease of Use
Implementation of the combined solution was straightforward and supported by responsive customer service teams at Descartes and Princeton TMX. The team likes the user-friendly interface and one-click functionality and can quickly train new employees to save time and money.
Better Delivery Performance
Real-time freight visibility allows the company to efficiently track and monitor loads, including predictive ETAs, and take action when loads are in jeopardy of missing delivery windows, improving performance to build brand loyalty.
Actionable Data Insights
The integrated solution provides visibility into critical transportation KPIs, reporting on everything from detention, accruals and carrier cost to tender volume and spend, which helps the company make strategic and dynamic planning decisions.
