The 357 Company (Acquired by ALG Worldwide Logistics)

0:00 Hi, Richard here, co-founder of Benmore Technologies, and I want to talk about the work that we did for the 357 company.
0:06 It's a quick overview of essentially what we did, a couple key things. Uhm, one, we created a, uh, basically a client portal for, uh, order management for them.
0:16 Uh, we created a shipping label creation system, and we created a, uh, digitized, uh, trucking company, or carrier, uh, carrier and courier onboarding system for them.
0:27 So, quick overview just for some content, right? So, the 357 company is a, uh, logistics brokerage. So, if you don't know about the logistics space, uhm, you, you know, when you go to ship a package, you may be limited to, you know, your understanding of just, you know, I want to ship, like, a, uh, say
0:47 , Mother's Day card to my mom. Right? I go, UPS, FedEx, whatever, drop it off in the mail, goes with it.
0:52 Right? Okay. Now, where logistics is very interesting, it was very interesting to learn about the industry, is, that's like, one little part of logistics.
1:03 Uh, the example that I like to use is, imagine you owned an ice cream company in, I don't know, Pennsylvania.
1:11 And you wanted to ship your ice cream to Ohio. You can't just drop that off in UPS. You can't just drop that off in FedEx.
1:19 This is where, uh, logistics brokerages, uhm, really come into play. Right? So, you're going to call up a company, like the 357 company, a brokerage, and they're going to know a trucking company that can give you the service of refrigerated shipping for your ice cream.
1:35 Right? It needs to be refrigerated, it needs to go across. State lines. They're going to help deal with all the compliance there.
1:40 Uhm, it's just very interesting. Like, manufacturing equipment, uh, international shipping, logistics is such a cool industry, and it was really cool to learn in a space out of Chicago.
1:50 Uh, you know, a large part of the industry is, it operates, uh, out of Chicago, which is very, very, very cool. So, regardless, we built for them those three key systems.
2:00 And this is kind of the supply chain technical mapping of exactly what's going on. So, let's say you run Sam's Ice Cream Shop, we're talking about shipping something from Pennsylvania to Ohio.
2:10 Okay. You call up the 357 company, and the 357 company is going to be like, yeah, we can get that done for you.
2:16 Like, let's set up a supply chain, like a literal, you know, chain of, uhm, of how to pass your orders to Ohio.
2:24 To us, uhm, navigating how, where we should pick up those orders, where we should deliver them to, and so we help build them, essentially, the tech visibility on top of that.
2:34 So, the orders need to be consumed from Sam's Ice Cream Shop. So, that's going to get sent to the 357 company via, I don't know, some sort of Excel document, uhm, you know, uh, could be uploaded via a portal or something like that, but regardless, those orders need to be consumed, right? Then, the 357
2:54 company needs to reach out to their sort of network of trucking companies and find someone who's going to be able to ship refrigerated, uhm, shipments, right?
3:04 Uhm, so, those orders need to be consumed, the 357 company needs to call up a company, work out that sort of, uh, energy.
3:13 Again, I'm a little iffy on the terminology here, but that load, right, essentially broker that load, I think it's called tender that load, uhm, to a trucking company, and then, you know, be able to see and manage the data from that trucking company's software, right?
3:30 This is where we came in and helped out, right? So, we built, uh, order consumption, uh, once the orders are consumed by the 357 company, 357 company, those orders, the shipping labels need to be made by the 357 company, uhm, so we built that label creation system, so from the orders in an Excel document
3:46 that Sam's Ice Cream sends to the 357 company, taking that Excel document, building a system that can create those little PDFs that you see on your UPS packages that can be scanned by the trucking company, uhm, the trucking company's software, uh, so there's visibility, there's visibility across the
4:01 supply chain, uh, we helped build that shipping label creation system, and then sending those shipping labels plus the order data over to a trucking company's software, so as the trucking company consumes, you know, through various points throughout the supply chain, scans it, yeah, it's in our warehouse
4:19 , yes, it's out for delivery, yes, it's out delivered, right, managing that inflow of data from the trucking company use, uh, software system, and putting that back into a client portal with visibility, with tracking, with proof of delivery for Sam's Ice Cream Shop, managing the technical framework surrounding
4:37 all of that, right, and I could talk for hours about, you know, this project, uhm, and how cool it was, uhm, but essentially, right, it's a continued maintenance and development, uh, and monitoring of the supply chain.
4:49 So, a couple key things that we learned. One, in the, uh, logistics space, it was interesting to learn that a lot of the software that, uh, provides visibility for the, your, basically, your package management, is very decentralized, So, a lot of trucking companies are running off smaller software companies
5:09 , sort of, uh, call it the order visibility system, right. So, scanning through various points through the supply chain, uhm, they're running off smaller software companies, uhm, they have their own software, so there's a lot of, like, one-on-one integrations that need to be done.
5:24 You need to meet with a trucking company software provider, you need to meet with their developers, you need to figure out partnership, and how to integrate with their system, how their data works.
5:34 It's not like you just go to some like large, like there's. Not one company that has every single trucking company manages all the trucking companies order visibility.
5:43 Uhm, you have to go, like, piece by piece and meet with different, you know, software providers and connect with them and integrate with them.
5:49 Uh, so that's a little bit different, a lot of service work, a lot of legwork that goes into that. Uhm, then consuming, once that integration is set up so you can, uh, effectively consume data from a trucking company software provider, uhm, then testing it, making sure it's ready for production, etc.
6:09 Then, making sure that that's going to a client portal for Sam's Ice Cream Shop to be able to log into, making sure that they can export it correctly, make sure that they can log in and see in real time what the, uh, status of orders are, uh, making sure that error codes are properly set and processed
6:25 correctly, uhm, you know, making sure that pictures are coming through correctly, making sure that the geolocation is coming through correctly, uh, just a lot of service work and, you know, this is just a project that we're, a project that we're very proud of.
6:38 Now, 357 Company eventually did go on to get acquired by ALG Worldwide Logistics, uhm, which is, uh, again, just a very cool part of this journey with the 357 Company, but overall, like, just making just a very, very cool, interesting industry to learn about and, uh, this is just a project that we're
6:55 incredibly proud about as a team. I want to shout out Meshay on the team who helped with this project. I want to shout out, uh, and currently maintains this project.
7:03 I want to shout out Samuel on the team who, uh, contributes to this project, Tijera on the team who contributes to this project, project. Overall, just a lot of work put in from our team.
7:14 Very interesting, uh, industry to learn about. A lot of nuances about the industry that you'd only pick up by working, uh, through an extended period of time in the logistics field.
7:24 This is a very, very, very cool product to work on and one that we're very proud here at the, uh, at, uh, at Bedmore.