Clemens Food Group unlocks $1.2M in savings with Loop

Clemens Food Group is a leading pork processor with over 130 years of history and operations across the US. Today, they operate seven brands serving both retail and food service industries.

Their vertically integrated manufacturing approach delivers premium products that meet the needs of health- and value-conscious consumers. This level of control and ownership has propelled Clemens' growth, but more importantly, allows them to continue their commitment to producing the highest-quality pork products on the market. Rooted in their commitment to service is their focus on sustainability. Clemens believes being good stewards of what has been passed on to them is both a requirement and a responsibility, and they are committed to the care and nurturing required to grow in a way that is good for their team members, animals, their community and the environment. Their success has powered further expansion across their existing factories and through strategic acquisitions.

To ensure they were making sound logistics decisions throughout this expansion and growing sustainably, Clemens recognized they needed better control of their transportation spend. They were still managing their financial compliance with manual, paper-based invoice processing—providing zero visibility into transportation spend patterns and savings opportunities. 

Clemens was looking for a way to make the most of their dollars spent.

Manual processing means higher costs

As the 5th largest pork processor in the United States, Clemens Food Group operates a complex transportation network across their feed mills, farms, and four manufacturing facilities. Clemens processes approximately 1.6 billion pounds of pork annually, with their transportation model varying by location:

• Hatfield facility: 80% of freight moved through their own fleet (PV Transport) with 20% handled by third-party carriers
• Coldwater facility: Only 20% handled by their own fleet, with approximately 80% managed by third-party carriers

To note, 1.6 billion pounds of pork translates into a mountain of paper invoices. Each week, one Admin Assistant was tasked with processing and posting around 500 invoices. To validate charges across carriers and facilities, they had to check with various business leaders which elongated the process. 

"Every invoice was mailed to the office, opened manually, and compared against the system. From what we've gathered – comparing the invoice to the system – there were many discrepancies to work through. This was a challenging task to manage" - Ed Zobel, Transportation Manager at Clemens

This lack of visibility and control created several critical issues:

1. Invisible financial losses: With no systematic way to audit carrier rates, accessorials, and fuel surcharges, Clemens couldn’t be sure they were getting charged the right amount.
2. No analytics or intelligence: The manual process provided zero visibility into spending patterns or opportunities for savings or network optimization.
3. Resource constraints: With the impending retirement of another Admin Assistant, the workload for dropping down to one Team Member would cause a potential operational work overload.
4. Inability to scale: As Clemens continued to grow through acquisition and facility expansion, their manual processes couldn't help them scale their transportation effectively.

Clemens knew they needed a solution that they weren't equipped to build in-house. They evaluated several legacy FAP service providers alongside Loop to find the partner that met their needs.

From manual processes to AI automation in just 3 months

Loop won Clemens business because of four core capabilities and their data-first approach to an old world problem: 

1. Transportation + spend visibility

Loop's logistics-AI offers unparalleled data management that ingests all carrier documents (regardless of format), extracts key data points, normalizes them, links them, and applies GL codes to create a comprehensive view of transportation spend. For Clemens, this meant no more shuffling paper between offices or manually keying in data.

2. Carrier invoice management automation

Loop's platform automatically compares invoiced amounts against contracted rates, identifying discrepancies down to the penny while highlighting where carrier data is off.

Loop helped discover some big discrepancies, especially where some carriers were applying the incorrect fuel surcharge rate over the years. 

Loop's data-first approach meant that Clemens could catch data issues and fix data quality. By automating the freight audit and payment workflow, Loop freed Clemens' team from manual data entry and validation so they could focus on strategic initiatives instead, such as successfully servicing Coldwater's expansion. 

3. Network optimization

Loop's transportation + spend visibility combined with its quality carrier invoice management creates a dataset that is a model and map of Clemens' unique supply chain. Loop’s platform creates a digital twin of their transportation and spend. 

This digital twin allows Clemens to understand spending patterns by carrier, lane, accessorial type, and more. Clemens can now take these insights back to their facilities and their customers' facilities to make operational improvements. If one of their internal facilities keeps getting detention accessorials from 3rd party carriers, that team needs to be held accountable to tighten their operations to eliminate unnecessary losses.

Loop’s  digital twin empowers Clemens to ask questions of their data and test different scenarios to see how different network or contract constructions would impact their bottom line.

4. 3 months to go-live

Best of all, with Loop's dedicated account team and flexible logistics-AI, Clemens knew they wouldn't have to be in the dark much longer. Loop's team and technology was able to get Clemens live in just three months. From there, it was all about streamlining internal processes, fixing carrier compliance, and finding savings opportunities.

Data turns into dollars

Since going live in February 2024, Loop has transformed Clemens' transportation spend management, delivering significant value in multiple areas:

1. Estimated $1.2M in Cost Savings

• Estimated $1 million in savings through cost avoidance Annualized due to systematic correction of carrier billing errors.
• $124,330 in overcharges prevented across $53M in spend and 22,054 shipments.
• $89,150 in identified undercharges to ensure they paid the right amount and not receive an unexpected bill down the line.

2. Transformation of Financial Operations

• 95% of invoices now approved with no human touch, compared to the  100% manually reviewed by multiple people before.
• Processing time reduced from days to hours for invoice review and approval
• 100% financial compliance on every payment.
• No need to backfill a retiring team member, saving annual personnel salary costs.

According to Ed Zobel, "Finance team numbers have been better over the last year [with Loop]. Accuracy, compliance, and control have all improved so we can better track to our goals."

3. Better data = better outcomes

• Complete visibility into carrier performance, spending patterns, and operational performance.
• Reduced invoice issues from 12% to <1% through transparent, data-driven conversations.
• Strategic decisions around carrier selection, contract negotiations, and transportation network optimization. This is particularly valuable as with Clemen’s 2025 expansion goals.

4. Improved internal and external collaboration

• Transparency and speed lead to stronger relationships and better carrier compliance.
• Better cross-functional collaboration across transportation and finance.

According to Ben Smith, VP of Transportation at Clemens, "Loop is allowing us to have more collaborative relationships with transparency. We can have fact-based conversations with all stakeholders and keep conjecture out of it."

Looking Forward: Expanding Loop's Impact

Following the success of their initial implementation, Clemens has expanded their partnership with Loop. 

In Ed's words: "We performed well over our initial ROI in the first year... The team here enjoys Loop, it's been a savior here. We really appreciate it and look forward to the next year."

Clemens is now looking to broaden Loop's application across additional areas of their business. The company also plans to extend Loop's capabilities to their agricultural transportation operations, including feed mill and farming logistics. 

Additionally, Clemens aims to enhance sales collaboration by leveraging transportation cost data to better inform pricing strategies. These expansions will further optimize Clemens' operations and strengthen their position as a leader in the pork processing industry.

Get started with Loop today to transform your operations.