Anonymous Health Education Manufacturer

Overview

This customer manufactures 3D models, print products, and promotional materials for health education and health professionals.

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Industry
Health Education
Manufacturing

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75% improvement in
shipping accuracy

ERP
NetSuite

Benefits & Key Outcomes

Automated, accurate

Reduced the need to hire
additional employees to keep
up with order demand

Excellent service
from ShipHawk
Customer Support

Challenge

Challenges on both fronts due to a lack of automation in its fulfillment process. “Freight had always been a loss, and we needed to at least try to break even,” said the Chief Financial Officer.

Almost all of the products are made to order and building the cost of freight into shipping quotes at the time of an order just wasn’t an option. Instead, it relied on a rate table that was several decades old to determine freight rates based on the dollar value of each order for its customers. The quoting process was completed manually, order by order, sometimes taking up to two days. Not only was this a bad customer experience, but it also resulted in losing business. The company achieved a slight improvement by using NetSuite’s native real-time dimensional weights feature, but as freight was still negatively impacting profits, it began looking for a complete solution.

Company for decades were retiring and the talent pool was tight. The company needed a shipping solution that would help it fulfill a higher volume of orders accurately without requiring more workers.

Case Study:

Anonymous Health Education Manufacturer

Solution

With ShipHawk, freight is no longer a loss for the company and it has achieved a more than 75% improvement in shipping accuracy. “ShipHawk allows our customer service and sales staff to instantly do freight quotes on large orders, which previously could take up to two days, because of Smart Packing and the custom rules functionality,” said the CFO. Utilizing custom rules such as preventing a carrier from being selected, handling markups, and adding insurance for certain orders significantly helped the company reduce manual steps. With Smart Packing, the team isn’t wasting time figuring out which box will fit each custom order. Instead, the Smart Packing cartonization algorithm automatically determines the correct box based on product dimensions and weights.

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It may seem intuitive to have the kits ready to go, but all products are built to order at this company. They aren’t your standard business - they have a sewing department and a paint department where every piece of a product is hand-painted and sewn together once an order is placed. The custom nature of the manufacturing process is part of what makes its products unique, but it can also be a barrier to efficient packing and shipping. “One of our biggest issues was that we partially shipped everything - one part of an order would be ready to go in the morning and we’d ship it out and then that afternoon, we’d have another component complete and ready to ship out,” said the CFO. “Thanks to the visibility we have with ShipHawk, we can now combine orders and cut down on unnecessary shipping costs.”

ShipHawk allows our customer service and sales staff to instantly do freight quotes on large orders, which
previously could take up to two days, because of Smart Packing™ and the custom rules functionality.

The company’s customers benefit from instant, accurate rates and reliable delivery due to address validation and the experience has been great for the frontline team, as well. “ShipHawk was very helpful in getting us the right details to include on our rate requests,” said the CFO. “Without them, we wouldn't have been able to finally get accurate freight quotes in place.” Despite hiring remaining a challenge due to labor shortages, the team is able to process orders faster and more efficiently using fewer people.