Shipping rating accuracy and timely quotes are essential in manufacturing, and unfortunately this company was experiencing
challenges on both fronts due to a lack of automation in its fulfillment process. “Freight had always been a loss, and we needed to
at least try to break even,” said the Chief Financial Officer.

Almost all of the products are made to order and building the cost of freight into shipping quotes at the time of an order just wasn’t
an option. Instead, it relied on a rate table that was several decades old to determine freight rates based on the dollar value of each
order for its customers. The quoting process was completed manually, order by order, sometimes taking up to two days. Not only
was this a bad customer experience, but it also resulted in losing business. The company achieved a slight improvement by using
NetSuite’s native real-time dimensional weights feature, but as freight was still negatively impacting profits, it began looking for a
complete solution.

A new solution was also important because the company’s workforce was also in transition. Workers who had been with the
company for decades were retiring and the talent pool was tight. The company needed a shipping solution that would help it fulfill
a higher volume of orders accurately without requiring more workers.

With ShipHawk, freight is no longer a loss for the company and it has achieved a more than 75% improvement in shipping accuracy.
“ShipHawk allows our customer service and sales staff to instantly do freight quotes on large orders, which previously could take
up to two days, because of Smart PackingTM and the custom rules functionality,” said the CFO. Utilizing custom rules such as
preventing a carrier from being selected, handling markups, and adding insurance for certain orders significantly helped the
company reduce manual steps. With Smart Packing, the team isn’t wasting time figuring out which box will fit each custom order.
Instead, the Smart Packing cartonization algorithm automatically determines the correct box based on product dimensions
and weights.

It may seem intuitive to have the kits ready to go, but all products are built to order at this company. They aren’t your standard
business – they have a sewing department and a paint department where every piece of a product is hand-painted and sewn
together once an order is placed. The custom nature of the manufacturing process is part of what makes its products unique, but
it can also be a barrier to efficient packing and shipping. “One of our biggest issues was that we partially shipped everything – one
part of an order would be ready to go in the morning and we’d ship it out and then that afternoon, we’d have another component
complete and ready to ship out,” said the CFO. “Thanks to the visibility we have with ShipHawk, we can now combine orders and
cut down on unnecessary shipping costs.”