Case Study Consumer Electronics

The company had built its outbound logistics around a two-carrier model, splitting domestic deliveries between east and west along a fixed geographic boundary. While simple to administer, this structure created significant hidden costs. With no competition between carriers, rates were not being challenged, and service accountability was limited. When a carrier underperformed, there was no fallback and no leverage to drive improvement.

Beyond the carrier structure, the company was operating without a modern transportation management system. Shipments were booked through manual processes disconnected from their SAP ERP environment, creating duplicate data entry, booking errors, and a lag between order creation and shipment execution. Customer service teams, shipping staff, and logistics managers were all working from different data sources with no unified view of in-transit freight.

The absence of real-time visibility had downstream consequences. Without actionable data flowing through a connected system, the company could not identify cost-saving opportunities, track carrier performance against KPIs, or run the kind of continuous improvement analysis needed to manage freight spend at scale. The static routing model that had worked when the business was smaller was now a structural ceiling on both efficiency and growth.

To modernize the program, the company needed two things simultaneously: a seamless technology integration that fit within their existing SAP environment, and a managed transportation partner with the carrier relationships and engineering capability to rebuild the network around competitive, dynamic routing.

Methodology

BlueGrace designed a three-phase approach that addressed the technology layer, the analytical foundation, and the operational roadmap simultaneously. Because the company was already working with a shared SAP integration partner, the initial integration was executed without disruption to daily operations.

Seamless SAP/TMS Integration

Leveraging the company’s existing SAP integration partner, BlueGrace connected its BlueShip TMS platform via ShipERP with minimal IT overhead. The result was a native integration that allowed the team to manage carriers, rates, and shipments without leaving the SAP environment.

Comprehensive Engineering Analysis

Using the company’s incumbent shipping data, the BlueGrace operations team conducted a full Supply Chain Engineering Analysis and Financial and Operational Assessment, identifying process improvement opportunities and quantifying the savings achievable in both the near term and future state.

Process Improvement & Future State Planning

BlueGrace monetized the identified opportunities and built a clearly defined roadmap from current state to optimal future state, covering carrier network expansion, dynamic routing technology, and an ongoing rate mitigation strategy to protect savings beyond year one.

Advanced Carrier Network

Using BlueShip, BlueGrace implemented a carrier network drawing on both national and regional partners. Dynamic Routing Technology replaced the fixed east/west split, selecting the best-value carrier for each shipment based on cost, transit time, and service reliability.

Cost & Transit Time Reduction

The expanded carrier network delivered an immediate freight cost reduction and faster transit times in year one. Introducing carrier competition eliminated the pricing premium built into a two-carrier model and created a foundation for sustained performance improvement.

Rate Mitigation & Service Strategy

BlueGrace shifted the freight cost management approach from pure rate reduction to an ongoing mitigation strategy, systematically fending off carrier rate increases while maintaining service levels and identifying additional savings through strategic initiatives each quarter.

Continuous Freight Cost Reduction

Acting as a trusted advisor, BlueGrace continuously identifies ways to drive cost out of the supply chain beyond rate negotiation, evaluating consolidation, mode optimization, carrier performance, and process efficiency as ongoing levers rather than one-time fixes.

Analytics with Actionable Data

With SAP and BlueGrace’s TMS connected in real time, shipment data flows directly into VISION™ Business Analytics, transforming raw freight data into customized dashboards that track KPIs, surface opportunities, and give leadership a live view of supply chain performance.