TAGG Logistics

Supply Chain Management & Order Fulfillment Case Study

TAGG Logistics Combines Cadence WMS and Logistyx Technologies’ Ship-IT for Real-Time Supply Chain Execution System

TAGG Logistics is a leading order fulfillment and third-party logistics (3PL) provider focused on helping businesses cost-effectively handle their order fulfillment and distribution challenges.  Operating out of facilities in St. Louis, Missouri (MO) and Reno, Nevada (NV), the company serves a nationwide client base of manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers shipping to their customers throughout North America and around the world.

CHALLENGE

Tod Yazdi and Gary Patterson founded TAGG Logistics in 2006 and began a steady path of aggressive growth.  “We knew that we were going to quickly outgrow our legacy systems as they didn’t have the functionality to address the more sophisticated requirements our clients were demanding,” said Yazdi.  TAGG had also decided to expand its services to support a wider range of companies.  “We now have some B-to-C clients that are doing thousands of individual orders a day.  We also have B-to-B clients who may do one order a day- but it might be for 40,000 cases of product going to Walmart stores,” he said.

Based on their plans for growth, TAGG’s team required their new warehouse management system (WMS) and transportation management system (TMS) to:

• Handle a very high volume and diverse order fulfillment environment
• Streamline and accelerate the picking process
• Provide flexible product and shipment tracking capabilities
• Provide sophisticated least cost routing for small parcel and LTL shipments
• Accelerate shipment processing speeds for both domestic & export shipments
• Automatically capture all order handling and shipping details for billing

SOLUTION

TAGG reviewed several WMS solutions before choosing the Cadence WMS by Cadre Technologies.  “One key to making the choice,” said Yadzi,” was that we picked five or six of our actual clients and asked the finalists to demonstrate how their orders would move through their system in a near ‘live test’ mode.”  They chose the Cadence WMS because it was designed for the 3PL industry, it provided the flexibility they needed to support diverse client requirements, and it included an integrated billing solution.

The company next replaced its TMS with Logistyx’s Ship-IT solution, which provides a single platform to manage all small parcel, LTL, USPS and regional carrier shipping.  Cadence and Ship-IT are tightly integrated with a scalable architecture to exchange information in real-time to create the most efficient high-volume fulfillment processes possible.

BENEFITS

According to Yazdi, the combination of Cadence and Ship-IT has enabled the company to efficiently scale its operations as it continues on a path of rapid growth.  Sales have increased 53% year over year since 2007.

He identified the following improvements delivered by Cadence and Ship-IT:

• Faster pick rates.  ” Cadence lets us configure how we group orders, wave them to the warehouse and how the order pickers get the order, which has dramatically increased the efficiency of our order processors.”
• Improved inventory tracking.  “Our ability to manage cycle counts, track products in the warehouse, and manage inventory for our clients is now over 99.9% accurately reported in our systems.”
• Responsive customer reporting.  ” We can now customize and provide information to our clients like never before, and they love it.”
• Integrated billing.  “The Cadence billing component has enabled us to create a highly automated billing process that fully captures costs for all the value-added services we provide.”
• Sophisticated, yet streamlined shipment processing.  “We now have a single system that allows us to perform least-cost routing for our shipments, produce all carrier labels and upload the actual shipping costs back to the billing system.”
• Customer-specific shipping programs.  “We’ve also embedded customer-specific shipping rules into Ship-IT, simplifying the process even further.”
• Paperless international shipping.  “Prior to Ship-IT, our staff had to interrupt their workflow to manually process international shipments, which was very time-consuming.  Now they are automatically processed in seconds, as fast as domestic shipments.”

Ultimately, the company has gained a real-time, paperless supply chain execution solution that can support much higher order volumes for the foreseeable future.

COLLABORATION IS CRITICAL

As fulfillment experts know, making the transition to an entirely new WMS/TMS system can be a huge undertaking that, handled poorly, can bring warehouse operations to a halt.  For this reason, Yazdi advises anyone considering the move to choose vendors with deep industry expertise and the necessary staff resources to support them for the long-term.  He and his team credit Cadre Technologies with being not just a WMS vendor, but a true partner, enabling TAGG to continue to improve its operations.

Yazdi values Logistyx’s flexible and high-performance shipping system, but he values the team’s transportation knowledge equally as much.  “Our shipping requirements are continually evolving as customers want us to add new carriers, new shipping methods and pricing programs,” he said.  “We always feel we can pick up the phone, call Logistyx and get what we need done.  It truly is a partnership.”