Case Study:
JL Marine
Overview
Saving time and money with accurate, real-time shipping rates and packing optimization:
How Power-Pole® maker JL Marine has improved margins, boosted efficiencies, and even found a way to expand into new markets.
JL Marine Systems is an industry-leading designer and manufacturer of boat control technology. The Tampa, Florida-based company’s Power-Pole was named the Official Shallow Water Anchor of the 2016 Bass Champs Season and has earned numerous additional accolades from professionals and boating enthusiasts.
JL Marine’s Power-Pole anchors and accessories are distributed through the company’s network of more than 1,500 US-based dealerships and more than 3,500 dealers throughout the world.
Benefits and Key Outcomes
Improved margins
through automated, highly accurate pricing
Enhanced staff productivity
by repurposing employees from manual order fulfillment to more productive, forward-looking roles
Exploded into new markets
by removing previous logistical and order-fulfillment obstacles to scaling, all without the hassle of having to find new logistics partners
Founded
1998
Industry
Marine Systems Manufacturing
HQ
Tampa, FL
Number of U.S. Dealerships
1,500
“Before ShipHawk, we relied on a fully manual process. This was consuming man-hours and eating into our revenue. Plus, with demand around the world increasing for our products, we were ready to scale, but item packing and shipping logistics were getting in the way. That’s what drove us to find ShipHawk’s logistics-automation solution.”
Anthony Thorn,
Director of IT for JL Marine
Challenge
JL Marine Systems, a designer of industry-leading boat control technology, including the Power-Pole® shallow-water anchors, was facing major packing and shipping headaches that were affecting the company’s bottom line.
With a catalog featuring hundreds of diverse products — some oddly shaped and large, some loose, others pre-packed — order shipping costs were often difficult to estimate upfront, which often resulted in dimensional discrepancies and price adjustments from carriers. This meant that JL Marine had to either absorb these costs or rebill their customers – neither a good option.
In addition, JL Marine sells both directly to customers and through its network of 3,500 dealers around the world – which means the company receives a constant stream of unique orders — from single-item purchases to bulk orders of large, difficult-to-package items.
With the manual processes they were using for packing and shipping, JL Marine was spending too many man-hours fulfilling orders and leaving margin on the table because they lacked the automation tools to accurately estimate costs. They needed an intelligent logistics solution that would provide real-time rates and packing optimization.
Solution
When they deployed ShipHawk, JL Marine’s Power-Pole team solved these problems immediately. With ShipHawk’s state-of-the-art shipping algorithm, the company was able to generate highly accurate, on-demand pricing for customers and dealers — pricing that was based on ShipHawk’s intelligent, multi-carrier rating algorithm that accurately estimated packing costs.
With ShipHawk’s shipping API, JL Marine was also able to integrate its new logistics solution directly into its existing ERP platform, Everest. This has created a seamless, automated logistics experience for the Power-Pole team, helping to streamline the packing of their products. Plus, it’s now boosting the ROI on every shipment that goes out the door.
“Because ShipHawk automatically calculates our fulfillment costs in real-time, we’re able to provide accurate on-demand pricing for our retail customers and dealers and eliminate problems like dimensional discrepancies. The effect of that has been not only more satisfied customers, but also improved margins for us.”
Anthony Thorn,
Director of IT for JL Marine
“With ShipHawk, we went from a manual packing and shipping process to a fully automated and intelligent solution. It has saved us processing time, helped us make better use of our employees’ talents, and boosted our margins on every order. Also, with these logistical problems out of the way, we’ve even been able to start expanding into new markets!”
Anthony Thorn,
Director of IT for JL Marine