all right we'll get started uh Greg thank you very much for taking the time
to you know I help with this interview and this is very useful for us you know
because you know once we use this all the time, how did it get started what was
the problem that you guys were trying to solve what was the frustration, you
know how did that you guys were trying to you know love me so we actually like
to take pictures of our outbound shipments so that customers know how
they left our facility so that if they show up and they look kind of sketchy
that we can show them a picture and say look at when it left the building it
looked like this it showed up and looks like a pain it takes then we need to talk to
the carrier not us now we actually we actually had been doing these pictures
for mmm about 10 or 12 years okay and the way we were the way we were doing it
is we had an application on a workstation that used an imaging scanner
so an old symbol scanner where you would scan a barcode we would then switch the
mode of the scanner to camera and then it would take a picture and print out a
very dark very difficult to see black and white on a big dial label yeah so
that worked for a while but you know when it was 10 or 12 years ago and
technology's changed a little bit so you know instead of a 2 pixel camera you now
have you know these 16 gigabit pixel cameras in your phone so people started
asking questions if there was some how we could upgrade it so we took better
pictures and make it mobile mm-hmm so we poked around with the idea of actually
writing our own again as we had done the first time and the gentleman the
gentleman who was doing that was having difficulty so I just got online and
stumbled across you guys and said hey these guys have already solved our
problem there's no need for us to worry about it anymore let's just call yeah so
so we actually had a process for taking pictures like I said about outbound
shipments we just needed to make it way better and you guys your product did that
there for us so we just gave up all development bought tablets and signed up
with you guys fantastic, fantastic, that's great
you know the feeling that when you you know looking for something and then it
comes you know it runs into you or you run into it you know that's that's a
great yeah it's a giant relief when you can go dude I do not need to reinvent
the wheel no wonder
um you know so so you guys know obviously ran into load proof and then
what did you guys do you know how did you you know well you know this is what
we need to and we need this you know we sent an email we sent an email obviously
to inquire as to how it worked I don't remember the nice gentleman's name but
he called us back almost immediately we set up a demonstration we went through
everything and we said that solves probably 95 98 percent of our problems
so we the we said let's go ahead and do it and we did and the only thing that we
got from you guys and I think you guys were already in development as it worked
on like Android phones but it didn't work on Android tablets okay so you guys
had this you guys had to spin up a new app for the App Store for us to download
the tablet version and once we did we are off and running
got it got it got it perfect and from that day on you've been using it ever
since yes and using it continually it's
actually it's proven so useful that they now use it in the returns department to
take pictures of stuff that comes back to us has returned so when the customer
says you know why did I only get 90 percent of the value we can show them
the picture and say well this is what you sent us you see that you're missing
the original packaging you're missing the box of screws you're missing 12 or
the 14 parts we can basically we document any sort of question we'll
return so that when we don't give full credit if we have full documentation
when the customer asks so just do a quick step back what what exactly is the
business that you guys are supporting obviously you're supporting from IT
perspective right right so global equipment is a company
that's been around about 70 years and what it sells it is warehousing supplies
so we sell you know like swamp coolers or giant fans pallet jacks everything in
between you know gloves to keep your hands clean gloves so you can grip stuff
heaters for the winter shrink-wrap if it gets used in a warehousing
environment then global equipment sells got it got it and you're supporting from
an IT perspective you're providing all the tools that the managers the
operators everybody I am in yep I am in charge of all of the IT software that
global uses to ship from there five US and two Canadian DC's so the orders come
to me from you know wherever the salespeople got them and then I'm in
charge of all the software that make sure they get picked back and shipped
and sent to the customers as quickly and nicely as possible okay so I mean you
know this is a different note I normally I talk to the about warehouse managers you
know those are the people that you know so this is an interesting scenario for
us because you know obviously you guys know from IT perspective you have to
support your end-users so no what are the areas where you guys found the
most value typically what we see is you know there is an outbound scenario
inbound scenario and then and then all these people right once there's something
goes wrong there is a claim that the submitter others charge back that issue
to us we spend a lot of time with figuring out within the operations team
they hey how did this happen why did this happen where to be you know drop
the ball right they talk about all those things like that you know what are some
of the areas that you guys where the most while you were able to solve the
challenges very well the single biggest area for us is our outbound
shipments probably he we ship I want to say about 60% of our product via UPS the
other 40% are all LTL shipments that are you know either in the floor loaded
strapped pallets so it's very important to us to get
pictures of those things as they're loaded on the truck so like I said when
the pallet shows up and you know let's say it was a stack of you know pallet
jacks and the truck pulls into the receiving customer and they find pallet
jacks all over the back of the truck like Legos we can call it they'll call
us and tell us that we're horrible because we don't package things
correctly at which point we can actually say no here's all the pictures from
where we loaded it with carrier you chose that made the mess I don't so
that's where it saves us says there's no you can't argue with pictures people
will try but you can say look when it left the building see how nice and mean
it was packaged and it was all scrapped and everything looks good so if you look
like you've got your son's room in the back of that truck you need to talk to
the delivery driver not us example yeah yeah yeah yeah that that makes sense so
that's out bound and you also mentioned yeah right yep we started inbound
probably six months ago I guess they were having a lot of questions about
returns coming in for customers you know where a customer would ship back like I
said primarily what we get back is as kits that are missing some of the parts
you know the customer I'll send back 14 of 15 parts but the 15 part is the
important part so we can lay it all out we can take a picture and say hey look
this is what we received from you you can either send us the 15th part or
we'll have to Bill you for the missing part and give you credit for that which
we receive yeah yeah so is that is that the parcel scenario or it's both parcels
and LTL scenario it covers it covers both okay so that means you are picking
means picture taking volume increased because you're you know initiating from
the outbound perspective only you are doing only LTL right pictures correct
and then we increased it by starting to take pictures of our inbound Freight
also customers look at stuff I know in the e-commerce world you know that
returns percentage is pretty high I don't it's like to be called ecommerce
a necessary evil sorry it turns is a naturally evil can be are dealing with
e-commerce and now okay it is it does not produce any income therefore nobody
wants to pay any attention to it exactly exactly so just curious from though from your returns
perspective what percent of returns you guys get and you know how much you don't
know I honestly don't know what the percentage of returns is so much of my
job is focused as you just said on the outbound because that's where the
money's made and the returns is a necessary evil so nobody's nobody's
asked me to go back and look okay I'm sure somebody in customer service or
management knows exactly what the percentage is for our returns but that's
not something I've ever been curious about understand um so so talk about the
transformation rate I mean how is it before using the load proof and then you
guys started using loadproof and how did how did your life change change and what got better
load proof before load proof as I said the
picture was from a 12 year old piece of technology printing out on a 2 by 4
label out of a diamel printer for me and there were three fixed stations and
every DC where you can devoted where you could take the picture so you have to
picture us preparing let's say somebody ordered enough stuff that they have a
full truckload of 26 pallets hmm now you've got a picture somebody
dragging twenty six pallets one at a time over to the workstation technique
picture dragging that pallet back getting the second one and then
repeating this whole process 26 times with you guys we have it all on a tablet
so once it's all ready to go he just walks along takes pictures of them as
they're going on the truck even and he's done there's no walking there's no
moving you can take pictures right where it's at
the other benefit is since we are not so well we're supplying the tablets but
since we don't have to set up more printers more hand scanners and things
of that sort we are only limited by the number of
scanners we have so every DC started with five and they've
been leased with it and the volumes increased to such a degree that I
believe every DC has added an additional five reason we went from an initial five
to everybody having ten yeah there was no additional cost and software
obviously and then there was just the cost of the tablets which you know thank
you to Amazon you can now get any kind of tablet you want for just about any
price you're willing to pay yeah okay so it was very easy to expand and it
streamline the whole process and saved you know hours per week in
picture-taking okay okay fantastic so um you know would you recommend we know
when somebody's on the fence hey should I use load proof you know what of what
do you recommend load proof what are your thoughts on that if I am given the
opportunity and somebody says do you have a solution for this problem
I most far heartedly would recommend you guys I have no problems no qualms about
it you guys solved but like I said you've solved a lot of stuff and saved
us a lot of time okay okay and you know just a ballpark right just a ballpark
very high level you know how much you know dollar savings you know loadproof
resulted from wherever you guys where and after you switch to loadproof uh you
know that that's something that I also don't know cuz I don't know the cost
what is it the there's a term for it man hours I think labor cost, labor cost
something man I don't know it's a cost per hour per employee so I don't know
that cost and we didn't do a time study beforehand but you know it'd be easy to
say that you know in every DC we're saving probably 70 to 80 hours per week
okay but which is basically the equivalent of two employees you know
whatever two employees costs our company we save every week just with
streamlining the process well that's me to employees for one
warehouse I mean it's a fully-loaded it's at least $25 per hour that's like a
$50,000 per year yep it's a it's a very significant
savings for us for a minimal investment okay got it okay perfect perfect awesome
I mean no this is great you know I will stop recording this
video and then we'll start the second recording