Loop identifies 6% in transportation savings for GILLIG

California-based company GILLIG is the second-largest transit bus manufacturer in North America. Besides designing and building buses, the company is passionate about reinvesting tax dollars into the community to support further advancements in public transportation. In this way, GILLIG's buses connect communities, reduce urban congestion, and promote a greener environment.

Apart from this, the company also ships aftermarket bus parts, spending millions annually on less-than-truckload shipments. With so many rates, invoices, contracts, and other details to keep up with, pre-Loop, it was time-consuming for the company to:

1. Catch and correct costly invoice errors
2. Identify ways to optimize transportation spend

Loop partnered with GILLIG in 2022 to address these issues. In 2023 alone, we’ve identified nearly $500,000 in savings.

The challenge: GILLIG's disconnected data

Prior to Loop, GILLIG used a transportation management system. However, it didn’t provide an effective way for GILLIG to centralize key documents containing invoice, contract, and carrier network data. Without this key data, extracting insights that would otherwise heavily inform their network and financial strategy is challenging.

Lack of visibility limited GILLIG’s leverage in negotiations

GILLIG’s transportation spend data was spread across complex contracts and thousands of shipment documents ranging from PDFs, spreadsheets, pictures of BOLs, and more. This meant GILLIG had to manually review each invoice to check discounted rates and analyze data across their carrier network, freight class, and absolute minimum charges. When it came time to renew carrier contracts, GILLIG had to rely solely on the expertise of their team without a central repository of data to assist in negotiating better contract terms.

Incorrect invoices were sneaking through

Given GILLIG’s scale, one person couldn’t possibly analyze the sheer volume of each invoice at the line-item level to ensure carrier compliance. Not to mention the complexity of transportation networks and contracts means that 20% of all invoices inherently have errors, making it even more challenging for teams to handle.

Like many transportation professionals, Kent, a Transportation Manager at GILLIG's, wore multiple hats as a logistics and warehouse manager. His many responsibilities meant Kent could only review 30% of GILLIG’s high-cost weekly inbound invoices to identify errors.

Without contracts and invoices in one place, it was hard for GILLIG to assess if they were being billed at the contracted rates across linehaul, fuel, and accessorials. With Loop, GILLIG discovered that, in many cases, their contracted versus invoiced rates didn’t match.

Manual work cuts into margins

Overall, GILLIG’s data lived in different documents (BOLs, invoices, proof of delivery, etc) so they could not get a consolidated view of their shipment and spend data across their network. This meant that Accounts Payable was spending 70% of their day doing manual, tedious tasks such as reconciliation, exception management, and approval workflows. As a result, AP managers spent less time on value-added work that could further improve margins.

Like many shippers, GILLIG knew they were missing issues and wasting time on manual workflows but couldn’t quantify the cost. However, because aftermarket operations weren't seeing a huge dent in the P&L, it didn’t seem like a priority for GILLIG to dive into. But when a trusted business partner recommended Loop, GILLIG started to wonder just how much profit it was leaking out due to these inefficiencies.

Discovering $487,449 in hidden savings with Loop

Loop's partnership with GILLIG is two-fold. On one hand, the company leverages Loop’s platform and logistics AI to:

• Improve cost visibility by digitizing every shipment document (invoices, bill of ladings, delivery receipts, etc.), extracting each data point, and automating GL logic to consolidate all shipment and spend data.
• Eliminate unnecessary losses by automatically identifying documents and rates with issues, using root-cause analysis to explain discrepancies, and streamlining resolution.
• Reduce transportation spend by running scenario planning and uncovering strategic insights across GILLIG’s invoices, carriers, and network.

On the other hand, GILLIG also takes advantage of our managed services offering. When Loop’s AI identifies discrepancies on invoices, our Success team works directly with the carriers to resolve them and prevent them from occurring again in the future.

Both have contributed to the significant improvements GILLIG has seen thus far in its operations and transportation management processes. Together, we’ve identified considerable opportunities, including money and time savings.

Loop identified ways to reduce spend by over $420,000

As far as transportation spend savings, we’ve identified and helped correct overcharges totaling over $70,000. We also identified a 25% reduction in same-day shipments via LTL consolidation (excluding GILLIG’s California facilities). This would dramatically cut down the number of individual shipments and result in $352,832 in savings.

Efficiency improvements saved GILLIG over $63,000

Beyond cost savings, Loop improved GILLIG's operational efficiency. The time Accounts Payable saved on payments YTD is worth $18,133, while the time Kent saved on manual audits was worth even more, totaling $45,334.

Here’s what Chuck O’Brien, GILLIG’s VP of Aftermarket Parts, had to say about these improvements:

“Loop transformed the way we do business, enabling us to capture data and utilize it for better insights on decision-making from how we allocate transportation spend to negotiating carrier contracts. They identified 6% in transportation savings for us.”

The impact of GILLIG’s partnership with Loop

How has Loop’s platform and managed services helped GILLIG achieve these outcomes?

1. Centralization enables complete spend visibility

Loop handles collecting, digitizing, and centralizing all of GILLIG’s key documents in different formats (PDFs, papers, images, etc.) from different sources (email, EDI feeds, APIs, etc.). This means no more long hours sifting through cluttered email inboxes to find the right documents. The entire GILLIG team can now access every shipment in the Loop platform to see the contract and bill of lading, along with any supporting documents like delivery receipts and weight inspections.

Once Loop takes in the documents, our AI pulls all shipment data, cleans it up (fixes spelling errors, removes duplicates, etc.), standardizes it, and links unique tracking IDs across documents and carriers. GILLIG’s supply chain constantly evolves but Loop's dynamic data management easily adapts to ingest and onboard new carriers, data sources, and document formats.

GILLIG's new premium data enables deep insights at all levels, from aggregate analysis to SKU-level costs. Their entire team can access self-service analytics with pre-built supply chain reports and customizable dashboards. Every analysis can be seamlessly searched, analyzed, and exported.

2. Automated audits lead to swift error detection and resolution

Loop ensures that every invoice (not just 30%) gets a thoroughly examined. Incorrect service fees? Incorrect rates? Loop's AI catches them all, enabling the Loop team to identify the root cause of any issues and implement or recommend appropriate solutions. This saves GILLIG time and money—the team no longer has to manually review invoices and run rate calculations.

3. Loop facilitates painless (and accurate) payments

To prevent overpayments, we extract relevant data from each invoice, such as the carrier name and address, PRO numbers, what’s approved to pay, and the requested payment amount. Our platform then runs an automated audit to compare invoiced cost versus expected cost.

If there are no issues, the invoice is kicked over to the payments workflow. If there is an issue, Loop’s AI runs a root-cause analysis to explain the discrepancy. Then our Customer Success team works with the GILLIG team to resolve the issue. Once the invoice is resolved, it is pushed to the payments workflow.

GILLIG uses Loop to know exactly what they need to pay so they have the flexibility to decide how and when to pay it. Loop provides GILLIG with their requested payment data (invoice number, invoiced amounts, receive date, due date, etc.) in a spreadsheet each week. From there, GILLIG releases payment to appropriately age their contracts and avoid late payment fees. This level of granularity allows them to maintain working capital to boost their margins.

4. Managed services boost efficiency and enable better financial planning

One of our customer success managers, Meghan, works closely with Chuck to help him improve his operations. She investigates GILLIG’s data, identifies trends, and optimizes network opportunities with Loop’s transportation spend intelligence. As such, Chuck views Meghan as an extension of his team.

In addition to making data-driven recommendations that aid GILLIG in contract negotiations and reduce spend, Meghan also takes the lead in resolving discrepancies. Upon identifying overcharges or other errors, she requests corrected invoices from carriers. This proactive approach prevents GILLIG from making upfront overpayments due to invoicing errors, and then having to wrestle and wait for reimbursements.

All in all, this combination of data-driven insights, automation, and consulting has helped GILLIG secure savings of 6.09% so far in 2023. That’s $487,449 worth of identified savings, and the year’s not over yet!

Contact us today to see what cost and efficiency savings your company can achieve by optimizing your transportation spend through data-driven insights.