How One Packaging Solutions Client Achieved High Carrier Compliance and Cost Savings Despite Marketplace Disruptions

Despite marketplace disruptions, Network Intelligence helps a long-standing packaging solutions client achieve high carrier compliance and cost savings — year after year

Breakthrough’s Network Intelligence helps shippers across verticals elevate their transportation network and achieve high carrier compliance. For one long-standing Network Intelligence (NI) client, Breakthrough’s initial RFP process in 2020 enabled network optimization and significant cost savings despite pandemic-triggered capacity pressures.

But as the pandemic continued into 2021, marketplace disruptions made carrier capacity even more volatile and triggered skyrocketing rates. To meet these new challenges, Breakthrough evaluated the client’s current needs and re-sourced their full network for untapped opportunities.

Although the pandemic turned the supply chain and freight network on its head, the client succeeded by relying on a trusted partnership with Breakthrough to maintain high carrier compliance and achieve greater visibility into their transportation network. The result was increased cost savings and an even more intuitive freight network, made possible by data-driven metrics, streamlined communication, and granular updates through Breakthrough’s centralized FELIX platform.

Capitalizing on existing success — and innovating new solutions

In 2020, Breakthrough held strategic weekly meetings with the packaging solutions client that were critical in establishing regular communication and providing data-driven updates on network performance. In 2021, Breakthrough evolved these weekly meetings to fit more seamlessly with the client’s internal financial forecast meetings.

Informed by Breakthrough’s data science and applied knowledge teams, network and carrier data generated from the FELIX platform was integrated with the client’s financial forecast numbers. This integrated data provided weekly updates on lane and carrier data in a way that complemented the client’s existing processes, empowering their transportation and logistics team to access this data when it worked best for them and make real-time adjustments to their carrier network. The client’s transportation and logistics team was able to view network data in real time — and evaluate changes on a monthly, weekly, or even daily basis to monitor compliance and make improvements to underperforming lanes.

Further, insights gleaned from FELIX data led to new contracted carriers — notably intermodal — that offered higher cost savings than spot market or brokerage carrier options. Even when transit and budgetary constraints created pressures, real-time carrier and rate benchmarking data made it possible for the client to find better transportation solutions, lowering costs and enabling a more intuitive and nimble freight network.

Greater visibility led to new opportunities and high carrier compliance

Heightened visibility didn’t stop at customized weekly meetings — Breakthrough’s FELIX platform was also utilized to produce valuable tender data.

Before partnering with Breakthrough, the client didn’t have any access to their tender data, which made it more difficult to assess carrier performance and discuss tender with current and potential carrier partners. But Breakthrough’s robust data and analytics capabilities bridged this gap by creating tender-acceptance tracking by carrier and by lane. This gave the client the visibility they needed to refine carrier partnerships and evaluate lane-by-lane costs. Breakthrough also used this data to conduct extensive scenario optimization that identified the right carrier capacity for the right lanes, ensuring that the client never incurred unneeded costs.

As the client’s carrier network became more refined and intuitive, they were also able to maintain high carrier compliance — even amid a turbulent supply chain and freight marketplace. Empowered by real-time Network Intelligence data, the client was able to proactively correct carrier issues by re-contracting freight agreements and communicating with carrier partners.

While the average carrier compliance rate for Breakthrough clients rounded out at 62% in 2021, the client maintained a 77% compliance rate within their carrier network. And because the client doesn’t rely on traditional RFPs to measure carrier compliance, the company stayed closer to its initial projections and ensured higher compliance despite pandemic-triggered marketplace disruptions.

The winning streak continues in 2022

Since the RFP kickoff in June 2021 with Breakthrough, the client keeps winning — in a big way. By August 2021, tangible results included:

• 301 lanes, 51,000 annual contracted shipments, $40 million in spend, and 58 carriers awarded (six of these carriers new to the network and found by Breakthrough’s NI Carrier Search)
• $1.6 million identified in savings compared to the previous 90-day baseline, largely driven by intermodal conversion, brokerage reduction, and more efficient utilization of lanes and hundred-weight carriers (empowered by NI and Breakthrough’s sophisticated RFP process)
• $500,000 identified in savings opportunities through a complex hundred-weight pricing workbook that analyzed lanes and shipments for its largest (and most important) carrier

The relationship between Breakthrough and the packaging solutions client isn’t merely operational — it’s a strategic partnership that remains supportive and agile even as the marketplace hits significant hurdles.

In 2022, Network Intelligence engagement continues to empower the client with the tools to consistently track their transportation and carrier network in real time, unlocking heightened visibility into new sourcing opportunities and greater freight solutions.