Small Enhancements, Big Rewards:
INCREASING SHIPPING PRODUCTIVITY OF NATIONAL DISTRIBUTION CENTERS
Regency Lighting offers full category expertise in lighting related products and services. Headquarted in Van Nuys, California, Regency Lighting partners with companies in their design, development, and execution of solutions for new store construction, lighting retrofits, scheduled and on call maintenance, fulfillment of replacement lamp orders, and disposal of hazardous lamp wastes. The company, which has enjoyed more than 25 years in business and grosses more than 90M in yearly sales, has six (6) distribution facilities strategically located throughout the U.S.
Case Study Overview
Due to explosively rapid growth in the last five years and $7 - $8M in sales per month, the management team believed the time was right to re-evaluate its national distribution operations to ensure optimal performance across its supply chain. In addition to streamlining supply chain operations, management also aimed to tackle several enterprise-wide logistics problems negatively impacting the company’s bottom line.
Regency Lighting's Challenges
Regency Lighting’s thorough internal analysis on company-wide logistics operations uncovered a trove of excessive carrier charges for items that were not being accounted for at the time of shipment, which resulted from a variety of reasons including:
- Dimensional discrepancies
Charges due to missing box sizes ($25-$125 each). - Shipments not flagged as Residential
Incurred charges to move shipments to correct delivery trucks ($12-$15 each). - Incorrect addresses
provided by customers, especially on locations difficult to locate ($6-$15 each). The internal research’s findings showed just how much these carrier fees were costing the company: a minimum of $3,500 per week.
In other words, the company was paying more than $190,000 per year in unnecessary carrier charges.
“CMS WorldLink modules can be added at any time, allowing you to keep your shipping application in lockstep with the evolution of your business model rather than forcing your business model to meet the limitations of your shipping solution.”
Wil Fekeci
President, CMS GlobalSoft
The Solution
Regency Lighting chose to modify its existing CMS WorldLink infrastructure with several alterations to combat the continued high volume of carrier fees and charges. Changes and enhancements to Regency Lighting’s logistical processes included:
- Modification of “Process Shipments”
CMS modified “Process Shipments” procedures to require manual entry of dimensions. - Flagging shipments as “Residential”
Regency Lighting modified its Customer Master table to include a flag that highlights residential addresses. In turn, CMS modified CMS WorldLink’s “Get Data” routine to recognize the flag and set the Residential Flag for the carrier. - Reducing incorrect addresses
Using Satori Software, an address management application built around the United States Postal Service database of addresses, to automatically perform address checking. - Track business line activity via custom reports
The Custom Reports & Labels module allows Regency Lighting to drill down into high level detail, looking at breakouts in each unit by service type, package count and total shipping costs.
The Outcome
In just two weeks after implementing CMS WorldLink add-on modules and business rules adjustments, Regency Lighting’s shipping costs were dramatically reduced from more than $3,500 to $300-$450 per week, resulting in significant annual savings of $150,000+ per year.
Regency Lighting calculates it recouped the cost of CMS WorldLink’s add-on modules within six (6) hours of shipping!
"CMS GlobalSoft has the shipping systems solutions to meet your company’s needs, whether you require an enterprise shipping or desktop shipping solutions. All of our shipping systems offer the core functionality of multi-carrier shipping compliance capabilities and give your company the ability to ship, rate, review shipping data and much more."
Wil Fekeci
President, CMS GlobalSoft
Add-on modules in use by Regency Lighting today
Rate Shopping/Best Way
Employees can rate packages via deliver date across multiple carriers and multiple services. You can also balance delivery speed versus shipping cost.
ROI: This module ensures that you can ship at the lowest cost while maintaining the desired level of service.
Address Verification
Verify the address data on your shipments as well as the difference between residential and commercial addresses.
ROI: Eliminate or minimize costs on address correction fees.
