Great Dane approves 98% of invoices with no touch on Loop

Great Dane is a leader in the goods mobility space, known for delivering high-quality products and exceptional service. They make more than just trailer and truck bodies, Great Dane connects people, equipment, and supply chain with their dynamic products.

They have always been champions of new ways of thinking and their partnership with Loop was no exception. Before Loop, Great Dane was looking for ways to:

1. Stop overpaying on freight
2. Remove manual invoice audits from their team’s workload
3. Improve carrier invoice compliance and collaboration

Costs of manually approving invoices

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Great Dane realized the need to automate their accounts payable. Financial executive Jeff Toman recalls, “Everything was tied to paper, from auditing mailed-in invoices to printing checks, and we were wondering how we could minimize in-person workstreams.” Not to mention, their Traffic Team, headed by Bruce Kearschner, was manually approving all inbound invoices and spot-checking invoices over $1,500.

After implementing a generic AP platform, Great Dane realized it couldn’t handle the complexity of freight billing. Keeping up with the ever-changing price catalogs is tedious and manual audits are time-consuming. Simply, they didn’t have enough resources to continue manually approving the sheer volume of inbound invoices. Great Dane wasn’t equipped to build the intricate solution they needed in-house, so they sought another partner who could automate their freight AP process.

Great Dane needed a solution that could:

1. Detect inaccurate invoices and streamline resolution
2. Identify cost savings opportunities across their network
3. Improve collaboration internally and across their suppliers and carriers

“Individually we can make recommendations and changes, but if we can make improvements for AP, then we can make improvements for Great Dane as a whole.”

Improved collaboration creates efficiency across the entirety of Great Dane. So when a manufacturing industry leader suggested Great Dane check out Loop, they could clearly see that Loop’s logistics AI met their automation needs. The choice to partner with Loop was clear.

Centralizing supply chain and spend data to eliminate paper and manual processes

With Great Dane’s initial goal in mind, the first step with Loop was to lay a great data foundation.

Great Dane sends Loop their shipment documents (invoices, bill of ladings, delivery receipts, etc.) via email or API. Loop’s logistics AI then digitizes every document and extracts each data point. Post extraction, Loop cleans the data (fixes spelling errors, removes duplicates, etc.), standardizes it, links unique tracking IDs across documents and carriers, and then automates general ledger coding. Loop’s dynamic AI easily adapts to handle new carriers, contracts, data sources, and document formats. This unlocks access to premium data that Great Dane never had before.

“Loop has set the standard for what great technology implementation looks like. We now try to have every vendor follow their model.” - Mary Lookebill, Business Analyst II

Historically, the team had to look across individual invoices to understand how a carrier was performing and how much Great Dane paid them. Now, Great Dane accesses Loop's self-serve analytics to see every carrier’s charges in aggregate and down to a line item level.

100% financial compliance, 98% invoices approved with no touch

98% of Great Dane’s invoices are now audited and approved with no human touch. Loop audited $8.5M in spend with 100% financial compliance. Now, it only takes 2 hours to process an invoice instead of days.

Aside from those significant impacts, Loop’s automation also bolsters Great Dane’s business in a few other key ways:

1. Improve spend visibility. Due to the complexity and sheer volume of inbound invoices, the AP Team couldn't aggregate spend data. But with Loop’s automatic general ledger coding and user-friendly analytics, they can now understand their margin per unit.

2. Eliminate overpayments. Loop identifies invoice issues and explains the discrepancy to streamline resolution. For example, Loop discovered FedEx billed delivery appointments into the Great Dane facilities which were not required for LTL shipments.

3. Boost internal collaboration. Before go-live, Loop partnered with the Traffic and AP teams to understand their cross-functional collaboration and determine the process that could streamline their collective workflow. Loop’s platform is configured to meet Great Dane’s needs and its teams received customized training to streamline their processes.

• Traffic team - can approve  invoices and can take notes to create action items with the carriers.
• AP team - can execute payments on approved invoices.

Having these separate permissions enabled the teams to collaborate with increased visibility and reduced workflow collisions. This means faster payments with reduced errors, more time to focus on higher-value projects, and better decisions by both teams.

4. Improve carrier relations. Manual audits meant more time and effort to process payments. But now Loop’s unified platform makes it easy for their AP teams to execute accurate invoices on time, every time. This means happier carriers. Mary Lookebill, Great Dane’s Business Analyst,  has already seen the benefits,

“After Loop, compliments from carriers on our customer service have skyrocketed.”

Loop’s automation identified $73K in overcharges in 2023

Overall, Loop has changed how Great Dane's traffic and AP teams do their jobs. By leveraging Loop's AI-driven audits, Great Dane's teams can offload work and boost accuracy. Loop identified $73,725 in overcharges and stopped payment on these inaccurate invoices.

Furthermore, Loop provides a holistic view of these issues so Great Dane could see that 7.8% of invoices had errors, the most frequent being fuel surcharge and class mismatch between the BOL and carrier invoice. Now, only 3.6% of invoices have errors because Loop continuously works to fix the structural issue of carrier compliance. To use Jeff’s words,

“Loop has turned my team from processors to analysts.”

The AP team is no longer crunching numbers and manually entering data. Loop takes care of that now. Instead, they're leveraging Loop's out-of-the-box and custom analytics to set baselines and unlock their transportation and financial health insights.

Jeff has lauded the benefits of Loop’s “ability to go back and look at key data without having to go through each individual invoice, and having the reports to accurately quantify savings. Loop can identify things more quickly. We can do things now that we couldn’t before.”

Great Dane sees Loop as a “stepping stone to do more with their business.”

Furthermore, Great Dane really appreciates Loop’s managed services. To quote Mary Lookebill, “We always appreciate how rapidly someone from Loop responds. No matter how big or small, someone is there to help us work through it. It makes us feel like a high priority. Everyone at Loop is wonderful to work with.”

Activating digital payments to improve working capital

Now that Great Dane has unlocked incredible learnings in their LTL shipments, they’re activating their truckload shipments on Loop so they can continue to increase their financial controls. But that is just the beginning.

In 2024, Great Dane is excited to expand its automation to parcel and digitize its payments with Loop. Modern payments further reduce risk, improve efficiency, and boost working capital. They’ll also unlock profit-driving financial tools…but we’ll tell you more about that in Q2.

In the chat our team had with Mary, she told us that she’s looking forward to leaning on Loop for other aspects of the business. “We’ve only scratched the surface of what our partnership with Loop can do for our business. I would love to include the parcel side to better understand our freight spend related to MRO. Bottom line, we’re thrilled to have a partner that is helping drive our growth.”

Activating digital payments to improve working capital

Once Great Dane unlocked incredible learnings in their LTL shipments, they activated their truckload shipments on Loop to continue increasing their financial controls. But that was just the beginning of their evolution.

Now that Great Dane has financially compliant and fast invoice management. They can activate J.P. Morgan and Loop’s quickpay solution.  This partnership is a win-win for Great Dane and their FTL carriers. Not only does it reduce risk and improve efficiency, but the quickpay solution also boosts working capital for both stakeholders.

With this solution, carriers take a small discount on their invoice to reduce their payment terms to one day. Great Dane is able to customize whether they wanted a portion of that discount back as a rebate or to extend their payment terms. This partnership facilitates stronger relationships between Great Dane and its carriers; one built on speed, transparency, and trust.

In the words of Jeff Toman, “Loop and J.P. Morgan Payments turbocharged our freight audit and pay. With quick pay now on 21% of our FTL payments, we get meaningful margin back on every transaction.”

Getting ready for Supply Chain 4.0

Great Dane started their journey with Loop in Supply Chain 1.0. But with automated workflows and digitized payments they accelerated to Supply Chain 3.0 in a little over one year.

They’ve not only turned automation into a competitive differentiator, but with quickpay they have started to optimize beyond their four walls by driving better career outcomes. This is the first time they have pushed their performance into Supply Chain 4.0 (an optimized network of networks with AI’s autonomous execution).

The results? Meaningful margin back on every quick pay transaction simply for having tight financial operations.

“In the age of rising costs and increasing demands on carriers and shippers to do more with less, it’s a competitive advantage to have Loop and J.P. Morgan Payments in our corner.”

With Loop, Great Dane improves financial decisions, eliminates unnecessary costs, and optimizes transportation spend in and outside of their four walls.  

Find out how you can turn your payments into a competitive differentiator today.