"We’re changing everything, how are we going to implement Rose Rocket to everybody? And it was actually seamless. We didn’t miss a beat."
Mike Derganc, Operations Manager and Chris Boone, VP of Sales and Operations at Experior Logistics grew up together in Philadelphia. As they grew up, left home, and went their separate ways to grow their careers, they serendipitously both ended up working in trucking. Then about four years ago, Chris moved to Chicago and joined Experior Logistics. Knowing that Mike also worked in the industry, Chris was able to convince Mike to move to Chicago and come join him at Experior. Childhood friends reunited.
Chris and Mike work for the brokerage division of Experior Logistics. Experior, based out of Chicago, was started about 15 years ago with two trucks, while the brokerage division was started about 12 years ago. Now in 2022, Experior has 250+ trucks and both the asset side and brokerage continues to grow. They primarily do LTL shipments but are really a one-stop-shop and also offer services like full truckload and reefer.
It’s nice for me because I don’t have to connect to a VPN. I can go to a Starbucks, connect to the internet and jump right on.
Chris Boone, VP of Sales and Operations
Switching to Cloud-Based Software
Before Rose Rocket, Experior Logistics was using an on-premise TMS software. Using an on-premise system presented some challenges for the team. One major challenge was that their team is distributed. There are some team members located in the U.S. that work fully remote, others that come into the office some days and work from home the others, and a few that are in-office every Monday - Friday. In addition, they also have a fully remote team that works out of Poland.
With an on-premise system, connecting to the system was a challenge in itself, especially for the remote employees. For remote staff, they had to get a VPN setup to connect to. Since moving to Rose Rocket, a cloud-based TMS software, Mike mentioned that he can now “Hop on any computer I want and just do it.” No more having to worry about a VPN connection. It’s made it easy for the Poland based team to connect to the system and for Chris to connect when he travels to Poland.
Another benefit of switching to a cloud-based TMS system is that they no longer have to rely on an IT team when they need something. The Experior team also doesn’t have to worry about continued expenses with Rose Rocket. Unlike their on-premise TMS system that would charge them for new features or upgrades, the Rose Rocket TMS updates every two weeks at no cost to users.
“I was kind of hesitant at first because we do have people all over the place – working remote, working in Poland. I was actually surprised how easily everybody picked everything up. Everybody was able to catch on — from the first phase when you’re building shipments, to sending rate cons, to delivering it, to sending the invoice. Everything is pretty self-explanatory for the most part.”
Chris Boone, VP Sales and Operations
In addition, the onboarding experience was very positive for the Experior team. Since the team isn’t working out of the same location and team members had varying degrees of tech-savviness, Chris and Mike were pleasantly surprised by how quickly team members were able to get up and running on Rose Rocket. Rose Rocket is a much smoother and easier TMS to use than their on-premise system.
"As far as Rose Rocket is concerned, it’s very nice — the team can comment on a load in Rose Rocket without being on a video chat. We can see what they’re talking about."
Mike Derganc, Operations Manager
Aligning a distrbuted teamWorking with team members in different locations can be tough. Ensuring that team members are aligned on what’s going on with an order is essential for the success of that order. With Rose Rocket, the team in the U.S. are able to see within Rose Rocket what the team in Poland are doing and what the status of a specific order is.
Since Rose Rocket tracks everything that happens with an order, it’s made collaboration between team members easier and more streamlined. For example, Mike is able to help troubleshoot any issues within a specific order that a remote team member might have by going to the order and seeing what has been changed or updated. There’s no need to jump on a call and troubleshoot with the team member, as Rose Rocket provides the information needed for every order, saving the team time.
Using Rose Rocket also provides visibility into what each team member is doing throughout the day, which is really important when your team isn’t in the same location. With their on-premise system, they weren’t able to know what a team member was doing, while with Rose Rocket they can see if multiple people are working on the same load or what has already been done. The team also uses the chat feature to provide updates about an order, to keep everyone aligned on what's happening.
Rose Rocket also allows for each team member to customize the TMS to their needs through features like Views. With Views, each team member can create custom views in their dashboard that enable them to see the most important information to them. Team members can also share their views with other team members, if multiple team members are collaborating on a project together, so that everyone is aligned. With their old TMS system, Mike used to create custom views by transferring the data from the TMS to an Excel sheet.
Saving time with Rose Rocket
One of the major differences the Experior team has noticed since switching from their on-premise software to Rose Rocket is how they’ve been able to save time by automating certain tasks. With their old system, sending a rate confirmation was unbelievably slow — it would take 3 - 5 minutes to send one rate confirmation and when you need to send 300 - 500 a month…well that’s a lot of time.
Sending Rate Confirmations
Sending rate confirmations and data entry was the Poland’s team primary job with the on-premise TMS system but now with Rose Rocket, the team is able to click a button and the rate confirmation is sent! No more double data entry from order to rate confirmation — Rose Rocket automates the process, which also helps prevent any errors from manual data entry from happening. Experior is now able to direct the Poland team’s energy and time to help with day-to-day operations.
Partner Pending Statues
“This is small but this is very big — we missed so many shipments because the carrier didn’t reply that they got it but with partner pending statuses, we have not had that issue anymore. It's a small thing but ooh that’s nice.”
Mike Derganc, Operations Manager
Notifications & View Statuses
Notifications within Rose Rocket have helped save the team time by not having to second guess if a carrier has seen a rate confirmation or not. The team is able to go into the rate confirmation and see if the carrier has viewed it. This empowers the team to decide if they need to follow-up with the carrier in another way.
Global Search
Another feature that saves the Experior team time is the search function. In their on-premise system, they used to have to scroll, and scroll, and scroll, and scroll to find what they were looking for. Instead with Rose Rocket, they can use the search function to easily find what they need. Since all the information they need about an order is in Rose Rocket, it also saves them from having to jump between email and their TMS system.
Visibility into Business Operations
Chris: “The analytics tab, I live on that. I watch it hourly. I mean I have reports sent out to the guys, so we see what we’re doing numbers wise.”
Mike: “He’ll text me on Saturday night at like 9 o’clock, “Did you see the numbers?” He’ll send me screenshots."
Knowing what’s happening in the business at any given time has been a huge benefit of choosing Rose Rocket for the Experior team. Their on-premise system did not have the best reporting functionality — Mike would hack together an Excel spreadsheet with the data and it got very big, very long, and very slow, due to all they different formulas, graphs, and charts. “I do not miss that at all,” mentions Mike.
Since all the information about the business is within Rose Rocket, Rose Rocket is able to consolidate the team’s data into helpful reports, saving the team time from having to search for the data within the system and then try to summarize it in an Excel spreadsheet. The analytics dashboard updates on an hourly basis.
Chris enjoys having a pulse on what’s happening in the business. He likes having the ability to pull reports and send the team the reports, so that the team also has visibility into everything going on and how various accounts are doing.
Looking forward
The Experior Logistics team has enjoyed moving from their on-premise TMS system to Rose Rocket. The cloud-based technology helps their distributed team work easily and keeps team members aligned on what’s happening in the business.
Down the road, Experior Logistics is looking into leveraging some of the integrations Rose Rocket offers like carrier compliance. They are also interested in leveraging the Rose Rocket Customer Portal more to further build relationships with their customers.
"One of those jobs that Rose Rocket erased was sending rate confirmations. We book a lot of loads and sending a rate confirmation with our old system was unbelievably slow. It could take 3 - 5 minutes for each one and when you’re doing 300 - 500 a month that’s a lot of time. That was going to be somebody’s permanent job but now it’s just like click."
Mike Derganc, Operations Manager
