Hey, everybody. It's Patrick Escolas with another Banyan Technology, Tire Tracks podcast. 

Today, I have with me John Vigliarolo from Nolan & Cunnings. I'm very happy to have you here, John. Thank you very much.

Thank you. I appreciate you having me.

I do want to say right off the get go. I love your mustache. I am a facial hair aficionado, and I believe it's where all the authority comes from.

It is. Most of my power is derived from my mustache. I think that's a line from Super Troopers.

That is. I'm so glad you got that, because that's exactly what I thought of. My father, my dad was military man and he had the military stash forever. He was all bald, and just that. He only cut it when my brother and I started growing ours. I think he was intimidated. He was like, "Who needs a moustache anyways?" Like, you're just scared that ours is better now.

Yeah, there you go.

He never admitted to that. So, we'll leave that off the record, though. But, John, thank you so much for joining us today. It's been a minute since I got to record one of these. They finally let me out of the 2024 cage, apparently. 

That's right. First, and I always like to start introduction, and this can be first off, who are you, and who's Nolan, and why is he so cunning?

Yeah. I'm John Vigliarolo. Like we talked about, I'm the president and CEO here at Nolan & Cunnings. Been with the company for almost 33 years, have been running the day-to-day operations of the business for about 15. Nolan & Cunnings has actually been around since 1920, so we're a 104-year-old organization. Ally Cunnings actually was kind of the backbone of N&C from its founding in 1920, until around World War II, maybe a little after World War II. Nolan, he was a lawyer by trade. We kind of lose track of him after the first couple years of the existence of the company, so we don't really know what happened to him. We just think he went back to practicing law, but – 

He's got his name attached to it, and then walked away. He's like, "I've done my job here."

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So the original application of Nolan & Cunnings was, we serve as a clearinghouse for loss and damage, and spoilage claims for the growers of fresh fruits and vegetables that were coming in from California and Florida in the early twenties and thirties.

I can imagine there had to be a lot of spoilage and claims, because reefer trucks didn't in any way exist.

No, absolutely not. So yes, that was kind of how we cut our teeth. In the mid-1950s, Mr. Nicholas Jarvis bought the name and the assets of Nolan & Cunnings from Ally Cunnings. Because back in that point in time, we didn't have PCs, we didn't have CzarLite, we didn't have any of that stuff. So really, the value was in the tariff files that had been accumulated. Mr. Jarvis introduced what he claimed was the first freight bill payment plan in the country. 

Was the tariff at that – or it's just a book of it kind of like a leger would look like.

Yeah. When I started here 33 years ago, we still had a room full of paper tariffs. Every once in a while, we had to go back and pull one of those out if we need to.

Where did that pricing come from? Hold on, go back to the Indiana Jones warehouse and find it.

Yeah, that was it. It's like going down to the catacombs to look for these old tariffs. But every once in a while, we still needed them. And obviously, like everybody else, through automation and technology, we've been able to grow by leaps and bounds to where we are today. We're a global freight bill audit, payment, and logistics consulting company helping shippers of all sizes take a look at what they're spending, who they're spending it with, and are they spending it properly, and making sure that all of those things are happening, and transacting the way that they're supposed to.

Which we know happens all the time, and you guys barely touched anything because it's always exactly what you're supposed to be billed for and nothing ever changes, right? No, freight bill is such an easy thing.

Once you call the carrier, everything just happens exactly the way that you wanted to with no changes, or no variations, or anything along that line.

The poor carriers. Whenever I talk to someone, I always end up giving them a bat, but it's okay. We need them. 

Exactly. We love the carriers. We love the carriers.

They're like family. You love them, and sometimes you're upset with them, but you're still going to talk to them – yeah, you'd still talk to them tomorrow.

Yeah. Look, if a lot of it is automation on the carrier side too, and a lot of things that the carriers have done to try to streamline their operation and make it more efficiently. Unfortunately, doesn't always translate to clean billing practices, right? We find, every year, 3% to 5% year over year is our average for every single one of our customers that we find in cost avoidance from. I don't like to say savings, but in cost avoidance, and that does come from audit savings of misapplied rates and things along that line. But also, it's something that we're going to talk about as we get in here a little bit further. But the duplicates, and the way that we see them, and the different methods that we see the duplicates coming in from the carriers, and the forwarders, and the brokers, it's just getting worse. It's not getting better with technology. 

I can't wait till we get to that aspect, because that is something as – I'm an account manager, I get to see some of those client issues, and the tickets, and I see duplicate come up a lot. I was wondering if that was like we were talking about, is it just like, we thought life seems to be going a lot faster now than it was six months ago. But it sounds like there's actually a trend that's supporting me seeing that email topic. 

But before we go there, I did want to kind of start it, so I know that we have an agenda. That's why you know we're going to talk about a little bit ahead of time, you sneaker. We've got on here the power of rate benchmarking. To me, as working with the TMS and live API, I know a lot about rating, getting live rates from carriers and 3PLs. What's rate benchmarking? What does that mean?

What rate benchmarking does, and what we do for our customers, and what we have that we've brought to the market now is that, as most people in our industry know, the pendulum on pricing tends to go back and forth every couple of years. From it being a carrier, to a shipper's market, it very rarely sits in the middle where everybody feels like they're being treated fairly.

We'd have nothing to argue and complain about.

Exactly. Right? Especially coming out of the pandemic, where we saw capacity shrink in the marketplace, we saw the ability to have drivers, and to get your freight from A to B, and to have people be able to work during that period, it swung the pendulum carrier side of things. We saw across our customer base, 10%, 15%, 20% increases in some cases from the carriers. And the shippers just had to take it, because they needed to still get their freight from A to B. Let's not even talk about ocean freight, and what happened in that vertical during the pandemic.

Yeah. Please, no. 

What we do, and we've got about an eight or nine billion repository of data that we utilize for those processes that we can take truckload parcel and LTL. What we can do is we can look at it and we can run it through our models, and we can tell our customers, "Hey, your freights performing under market, which is great, keep your mouth closed, and keep going. You're at market rates, which maybe we can do a little bit of digging, and see if there are different areas, or different regions, or territories that that maybe could do a more targeted renegotiation. Or if you're performing over market, then we're going to come back and we're going to say, "Okay, you guys are paying too much."

We do that by looking at every shipment, every lane shippers of comparable sizes. So we're not going to take a shipper that's got a $2 million freight spend and compare them against a shipper with a $250 million freight spend. What we do in our benchmarking exercises, we try to line them up with a shipper that spends about the same that they do. Even, we try to get, and we're doing more and more industry specific. I'm based out of Detroit, so I have a lot of automotive business. 

No. In Detroit? No, that's crazy. While you're talking to Detroit, you've got the Michigan helmet up there. I can't be too happy about it, but luckily, it's a rivalry again. 

That's right.

The Buckeye in me is happy to see there's something worth playing. But, no.

Yeah. Right above it is my Lions helmet. You just can't see it in the Zoom frame.

I respect that. I'm a Browns fan. We know how – you guys were great story. I rooted for you, because we all know what it takes to get that pro-team out of the trenches. But talking about that industry specific, because that's got to be key, because A, how you're moving freight if you're freights ugly, what you need as far as an equipment type is going to be more in line with what you're seeing from an industry that you're working in. Even more so than a volume that you're playing with compared to other players.

Yeah. Absolutely right. Like you said, you're not going to take somebody that's shipping foodstuffs, and think that they're going to be playing on the same plane as somebody that's moving big, heavy, bulky auto parts, or chassis parts, or dye, something along that line. Once again, we've gotten more and more sophisticated with how we're modeling out our benchmarking exercises to try whenever possible to kind of go along, and the industry standards, or your standard industry to make sure that everybody's – if we say, "Hey, you're overpaying." We want to be able to deliver those results in the backend, and not say that every $20 million shipper is going to be entitled to the same type of pricing.

No. That brings up another good point. Now, is that something that you guys include within your case study, or value add of that 3%, or is this ROI on top of that?

No, this is ROI on top of it? The 3% to 5% that we talked about earlier is strictly in the freight bill audit.

Yeah. Just matching, quoted to audit, and getting in the mix there.

Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.

Then, with that, is that something did you and the Nolan & Cunnings team then go in, and help with that carrier negotiation? Or, you're saying, "Hey, here's all the data, go talk to this carrier and tell them you want to pay less" or "Don't ever talk to them, because clearly, something's going right. Just accept the pizza lunch she brings every other month and smile"?

Yeah. What's kind of unique about the way that we have positioned ourselves is that, everything's kind of ala carte. We kind of have five pillars of services that we provide. Then, the customer has the option to use all of them, or select which ones they want to use. Usually, after we go through a benchmarking exercise, if we determine that there's opportunity there for the customer. As we're reviewing the results with them, we'll tell them, "Hey, Mr. Shipper. Now that we've done this, we have the tools, the resources, and the knowledge of the market to help you secure better pricing. We can help you optimize your freight, supplement your carrier selections, because that's one of the other things that we're going to do, is we're going to see, are we going to range in with a carrier? Are you opening a new DC? Do you need a new line haul carrier, or whatever the case may be?

So you're going to help diversify the pool as well?

Exactly. If they want that. They're like, "You know what? Nope, we want to use five carriers. I don't care about using any more carriers." But the other ones, we're going to say, "You're going to be better served to diversify your carrier base, look at it more as a super-regional basis, as opposed to just a national basis. Then, you get into – if you're on the truckload side of things, do you want to include only asset-based carriers? Do you want using brokers? Then, you just kind of build it out from there. 

We do give the customer that option of taking them after the benchmarking exercise is done. We can give them the data, review the data with them. Then, let them take it, and do the negotiation on their own. Or, we can say, "Okay, let's continue to work together on this, and we can help you secure that pricing." Then, when we do that, I don't want to own the pricing. I'm not a 3PL. Anything that we do in that regard, any pricing that we negotiate, any rate sheets that we get executed on behalf of our customers, that's theirs, they own it, they own the relationships. We want them to know that those carriers, those terminals, those reps. We're just kind of the facilitator.

That's great. It sounds like a great way to make sure your clients are happy and get sticky with you, as they use as many of those, as you said, the five pillars as they may want, and in a way that they want to do it. Because – I don't know if you've met anybody in freight or shipping, but everybody's pretty, I don't want to say stubborn, but I'll say stubborn. But because, hey, most of the people you work with have been doing it for 30 plus years and are like, "I know what works." But, that kind of brings us to the next point here. Talking about the carrier RFP support, is that just kind of go hand in hand with the benchmarking and negotiating that way, or is this a completely just another one of the pillars.

Yeah. No, that is the second of the second pillar of what we do. We look at what they're doing, how they're doing it, what they're spending, determine where that spend is to the market. Then, the second pillar is going to be, "Hey, let's get better pricing, because now we know that we're overpaying here, so let's get some better pricing and get you more in line at or below market cost."

Yeah. Are you seeing that – maybe the organizations that you're talking to are large enough that it'll always be that. But, are people still going through the standard formal RFP process, or is that changing at all?

That's changed a bit. One of the things that technology has given all of us is the ability to be much more targeted. If you have ADC, or a territory that may be underperforming, you can do very targeted RFPs. Some customers still choose to do full blown RFPs, and it really is going to depend on what the results of that benchmarking exercise are to determine, do we need to do a full blown RFP? Do we need to do an LTL RFP? Do we need to do a truckload RFP? Do we need to do both?

Then, what's going on with your small parcel spend all on the same time, and how's that operating? What's your service utilization like and things along that line? So it's really – the results of the benchmarking exercise typically take us down the path to what type of RFP are we looking at doing.

You just kind of mentioned, so you're playing in LTL, truckload, and parcel space? Are there any other modes that you guys are touching as well, or basically anybody's going to build for?

Well, as far as the RFP in the benchmarking process, that's kind of where we draw the line. Ocean freight is just such a different animal. Expedited air freight is just such a different, different animal, that we, at least to this point, haven't developed the tools enough to appropriately benchmark and help our customers bid that stuff out. There are companies out there that do that. We haven't found one to partner with on that. Because, look, I'm a big believer and that's why we have the relationship that we do with Banyan, is that, I know I'm not going to be an expert in everything. I think part of being a good leader, and a good manager on your business is knowing areas that you're weakened, and finding people with skill sets to complement those weaknesses. That's how I position us, and I'm not going to be an expert in everything. But you know what, I'm going to find you somebody that we can work with that can complement what we're doing to give you that best service that you can get.

I love that outlook. I've always been – I know a guy kind of person. I know what I know. I know what I don't know. Like you said, I'm extremely intelligent, because I know all the places I'm weak and no. But within that, yeah, I think that's a great model to have. If you overextend and be the master of all, then you tend to lose sight of those things you were really doing well trying to over encompass everything. So, no. 

Then you mentioned our name, Banyan. We were kind of talking about technology, obviously, with what you guys are doing, and I love what you're doing. Technology's got to be a big part in it. How is the role of transportation management systems, Banyan or not, been coming into play there?

It's huge, and that's actually one of the biggest pushes that we're making, both within our existing client base for organic growth, as well as what we're taking to market. So now, we're talking about that third pillar of what N&C does. That's the technology piece of it. So we've now looked at the rates, we know that the rates are too high, we've done the RFP, we know we've got this new pricing. Well, then, let's get to the technology side of things in TMS, and let's make sure that you're making the right decisions, informed decisions, so that you're picking the right carrier, the right mode, the right service. Then, oh, yeah, I didn't get to number four till I got the cost.

Technology plays a key role. We work with our customers to integrate them into TMS now that we've done these first two steps, to then give them a tool to better manage, better execute, give them better visibility of what they're doing on making their sourcing decisions on a load by load basis. So, technology is huge. 

Within that, just from my perspective, one thing that I have seen within the past six months as a major, not about change, but a ramp up, more and more integrations from TMS into other systems. Whether that's ERP systems, warehouse management. Are you seeing that as well? Are you being asked to play and take a look at all of that?

Absolutely, yes. A lot of what we're looking at is bidirectional integrations, between ERP systems and TMS systems, our freight audit platform, whatever the case may be. Then, on the backend of that, after the transactions are either shipped, and costed, or audited, and completed. Feeding data back into those ERP systems, because then, you get into the data and reporting aspects of it so that everybody needs to see that visibility. Some use our tools, something like us to feed back for their tools. Other customers and I'm working on a product project for a client right now that they're wanting to use freight audit data to help calculate cost of goods sold, freight as a percentage of sales, and things along that line. We're feeding back into their ERP. We're building out some specialized reporting for them so that they can see that on a transaction level, and a customer level, on a divisional level to see how, "Okay, we budgeted X, we paid Y. Let's see if we're over how we're forecasting."

That makes a lot of sense, because even looking at a TMS, and if you weren't doing part of what you guys are doing with the freight audit, that quoted data is only half the battle. It isn't going to be that true sense of actual cost. In order to have an ERP, or WMS, or your dashboards be accurate, and do that breakdown, you've got to have that end all be all costs after the dispute, after the variance is talked, and what you actually paid. That makes a lot of sense, and I can see how important that would be to the data you're getting in and out of that.

Within that, and we've got this – you're doing the audit piece. First off, I got a question here. Do carriers hate when they know that a shipper has gotten involved with Nolan & Cunnings, because now, they're going to deal with all of this? Or is this something where they're just like, "Oh, no. We know those guys. They keep us on the straight and narrow." What does that relationship look like? Because you're the IRS to some. You know what I mean?

Yeah. I mean, it can be contentious, I'm not going to lie. But we try to view the carriers as a partner. We all want the same thing. We all want the load to get from point A to point B on time, and to pay for that load.

The fair price, whatever that may be.

The fair price for that load. But our piece of that is making sure that the customer is only paying what they agreed to pay. This is where we kind of take that integration even a bit further. And for the customers that we haven't utilized TMS, we integrate the TMS into the freight audit platform, and we get a feed back into our system every day of the loads that shipped the prior day. With, who the carrier was, obviously, the origin, destination information was, estimated costs, things along that line. So then, as the transactions come in from the freight carriers, whether it's an EDI, and XML, or an actual freight bill, one of the first things that we do is we validate that that's a good shipment, that's their bill of lading, that's the right carrier. Then, we do the first audit step that we do from a dollars and cents perspective is quoted versus billed.

Right. That's the easiest, right?

That's the easiest.

You got one number versus another number.

Exactly. If that matches, great. But then, we still pass that off to the audit engine at that point in time. Because look, mistakes are still made, people are still the ones responsible for inputting the pricing into the carrier's rate engine that they're using to create their invoices. So, we don't depend strictly on the estimated cost coming in from TMS. We still load the contracts into our rate engine, and we do have a rate audit of every charge and every freight bill for two things during our process. First thing that we're doing is, did the shipper request the services that are being billed for by the carrier. Did they need a lift gate? Did they need inside delivery? Did they need, whatever, on the demand? Did they need time definite delivery, things along that line?

All the buttons.

All the hot buttons.

Exactly.

The first thing that we do is we go through, we look at the transaction, we look at the paperwork, we look at TMS if we need to, to see what pre-tender accessorials are requested to make sure that the carrier's only billing for the for the charges that they've asked for. After that, then, we go to the dollars and cents audit where we make sure that from the contract, from the rate sheet –

Was that accurate in the first place?

Was that accurate in the first place, right. Then, what we do is we try to collaborate. So if there's discrepancies, if it's a recurring discrepancy, maybe it was a crappy copy of the bill of lading, so the carrier's OCR didn't read it right and create a bad invoice

Fine. Blame it on the OCR, John.

Yeah. We use a ton of OCR, so I can't throw too many stones at it. But if it's a recurring thing, we try to call that out, we try to maintain good relationships with the pricing people at the carrier side, as well as the receivables people, so that we can we let them know if we're seeing a pattern.

Hey, is this one user not hitting lift gate every time they need lift gate? Or, is there a disagreement on what's the limited access and what isn't? Okay, that makes sense to me. Now, I heard something this past week, and I'll ask you, and see what you say. But with all this disputes in freight bills, how far back could somebody – could a carrier go and say, "Hey, no. There's a billing discrepancy here"? Because there's got to be date – and what do you guys do within that? What's the statute of limitations on a freight bill?

Yeah. Statute of limitations is one thing; relationships is something different. What we try to do is we always try to mediate those types of situations, where – look, if this is a long-standing carrier, and the driver had a bill of lading slide under a seat, or something like that. And six or eight months later, it comes back, and they invoice it. Several years later, that's a problem. But from what your –

Well, I was just saying, I want to know what's the longest time that you've had to be like, "Wait, what is this from?"

Yeah. Unfortunately, we still see some of that, that we've got some bills currently, that are actually about four years old, that we're still trying to reconcile for one of our customers. The shipper is like, "Well, no. I'm not going to pay these." Or like, "Well, look, we've got this paperwork saying that they've performed the services for you. I know your books are closed, but –

That's where the technology helps out. Because then, you could always get the archival data versus if your pen and paper what – what notebook, what catacombs from the 1950s tariffs you have to go find then, right?

That's another advantage to having a TMS. We've heard all of our customers utilize a TMS, because then, you have that system of record. Another thing that we do as part of our audit process is that we utilize match pay. We're matching the shipping data coming in out of TMS, with the freight bill data as it comes in, closing those transactions. Then, at month end, we're able to help them create very accurate freight accruals showing, okay, here are your open shipments that we haven't seen invoices for yet with the estimated cost from TMS. So that, now, you have an accurate freight accrual to book, number one.

Number two, it gives us visibility on what invoices do we have outstanding, how old are those invoices that are outstanding. Because then, we can start chasing the carriers. "Hey, we've got these ladings that we tendered to you three months ago that we haven't seen freight bills for yet.

We got to expect they're coming in.

We got to expect they're coming.

We can't be like, "Yeah, we closed it. They didn't bill us. It must have been free?

Exactly. That's another advantage to having a TMS, is having visibility on open liabilities that you haven't been billed for yet.

No, that's awesome. With all of this, as you talked about, we get the data in, the data out. Whether it's an ERP, whether it's an interim report, and whether you're using that to go talk to your carrier about different rates. What does Nolan & Cunnings bring to the report game? But then, I guess, another question would be, with all of this data that you're seeing and the trends that you're trying to match up to shippers of industry, what kind of trends are you seeing? Whether that be unofficial, or what's happening in the world today of shipping?

Yeah. It is all about data. I mean, you guys know that, we know that. We collect between 80 and 120 different data elements from every freight bill that passes through our system. We take that data, and we've created an entire set of BI reports, that as a constant – in a constant state of change and turnover, as we receive feedback from our customers, "Hey, this would be nice if it could do this. Hey, it would be nice if we could see it like this."

So, we've taken, we've created kind of our BI with that in mind with customizable filters, based on mode, or carrier, or location, or division, or whatever the case may be. So that they can take and look at who they're spending their dollars with, what they're being spent on. The accessorial charges are in – and you ask, what trend that we're seeing. That's one of the biggest trends that we see, is that, I have never in my 33 years of doing this see more accessorial getting billed by carriers that I'm seeing today.

Are these accessorials that aren't selected within the quoting process?

Well, yeah. I mean, unfortunately, not as many of our customers are using TMS as we would like. We don't know other than what's on the paperwork, or what's being requested, or what's being billed for. We love our carrier friends, we've said that, right?

We do.

But in a lot of cases, what we've heard is that these terminal managers are incentivized to assess accessorial charges at the terminal level, because it helps their margins. So, we're seeing more and more accessorial charges being assessed. A lot of [inaudible 0:29:27], and things along that line. Just the sheer number of accessorial charges that we see is incredible. Look, if they're legitimate, they're legitimate. I've got no issue with that. But like I said, it's been something that we've seen more and more of going on and on. 

Has that increased the time of closing a dispute because there's so many more and there's a backlog of it. What is that done for that process on the backend?

Well, it's a little bit of both. It depends on how much we can validate. Then, what we do is, once again, when we see trends, we try to be very proactive with our customers about, hey, we're seeing this happening a lot on this carrier out of this location. Do you guys have something going on? You haven't loss last time you had your scale certified. We try to do things to help mitigate those.

Control all the variables you actually have control over. Yeah.

Exactly. We're seeing a lot of that. But it's really getting the data in a usable format, or user friendly format. It's also helping scorecard the carriers too. It's helping – here are your carriers, here's your spend, here's the number of bills that they're sending in that we're having to make audit adjustments on, here's the value of those audit adjustments. Then, the duplicates. Here's how many duplicates we're seeing, and the value of those duplicates. I know that was something we wanted to come back to, and I would love if we want to kind of segue.

I would just say it right now, this is the time, John. 

Yeah. The carriers and the way that their billing is different now than like I said, anytime that I've seen it in my career. It used to be, that if a carrier created an invoice, they sent it into you, and they determined that there was a post-tender accessorial that they didn't include, or something along that line. You'd get a new freight bill with the same invoice number that would say, "Corrected bill," whatever the case may be. Sometimes, it would include all the original charges, and what they build. Sometimes it would just bill or include the charge that wasn't assessed originally. It was easy to reconcile that this was another copy of an invoice that we've already seen.

Sure. You can match it up to something within there and put it against it. Yeah.

Yeah. Unfortunately, what we're seeing now is that the carriers are, for whatever reason, when they realize that there's charges that haven't been paid, we're getting an entirely new invoice with a new invoice number that doesn't always reference that original freight bill.

So we got shipments Ghost shipments.

Exactly. What we're seeing, unfortunately, it happens a lot with freight forwarders. Unfortunately, and a scary thing is that, we're also seeing it with brokers, where loads are getting double billed by the broker carrier, and then the subcontract carrier. If the broker doesn't pay the subcontract carrier soon enough, they have all that paperwork.

They're coming after you directly. So they're coming directly for it when the agreement is with the broker. And in that case, you're going to have a different carrier with a different invoice number, and probably different charges. Because the brokers don't do this out of the goodness of their heart. That makes it and you'll hate it. 

What's causing this?

I wish I knew, right?

If you knew, you have a prevention method. Yeah.

But it will also probably put me out of business at the same. What we do now is we've built out – and actually, we've got a new version of it, where we're actually trying to introduce an AI component to it. Where we're running about a 13 field algorithm that looks at different characteristics of the freight bills, to determine based on origin, destination, ship dates, weights, bill lading numbers, of course, pro numbers, carriers, some commodity information, things along that line. We're looking at different components of the invoice, and not just depending on the carrier and the pro number to help reduce the opportunity for duplicates to get through our system and be paid twice by the client. 

Now, I imagine that would be something that, even if this duplication process wasn't happening, you guys are probably going down to utilize AI within your resources. Does this just speed up the process, or was this probably – as soon as you saw AI, you're probably like, "Hey, this could probably make our value add even better"? Because AI is everywhere now, so how did that – how did that discovery go for Nolan & Cunnings?

Yeah. We were already kind of going down that path, trying to look at ways to improve our systems. Our OCR process utilizes an AI component, so that it knows what it's looking for, and where it's looking for. I mean, the velocity that we can get invoices from received in our system now is just incredible compared to where it used to be.

That’s awesome.

But now, even with the duplicate process, with the geocoding process, we're able to train the system better to do things faster. And yes, some of the recent technological advances have allowed us to do these things a little bit faster. It's given our programmers, it's been kind of a blessing and a curse, because now, they're learning on the fly too. You know that. You guys have a lot of developers there, right?

Yes, we do.

It's a blessing and a curse, and they curse me all the time for telling them to do all this stuff.

But that's the role. We will say it's easy, and someone back there will do it, and they will curse on the eighth cup of coffee that they've been up all night trying to figure out the three minutes sell that we turned into a week of work for them. 

My operations people hate when I go out and see customers, or potential customers, because the word no is not in my vocabulary. I'm like, "Hey, we'll make this work." Then, I come back, and I sit down with the general manager, says, "I just promised that we could do this." She looks at me, and I could use some colorful words here for some of the stuff she says to me, is like, "How the blank are we supposed to do that?" I'm like, "Dude, that's your problem."

I love it. Because, my seat – I get that face from my CTO a lot. Yeah. I go, "I haven't promised anything yet, but what if we did this?" And he gives me his face. Now, in his defense, he doesn't always smile, so you can't really tell. He's got a good stoic face, but I know, I know that he loves when I come in the door.

You know that look, right?

Yeah, I do. But you know that you're doing something right when you're having those conversations. "Hey, this is something new that I think is important. How can we do that?" I think that you guys are clearly having that conversation a lot with, whether it's the benchmarking, and looking at the – against the industry, whether that's helping the RFP process, or involving the bi integrations with ERPs, and getting your data back into it. So they can get that cost per product or per shipment from a real, here's what we're billed and paid, not just from a quoted perspective.

You guys, it all sounds great, and I wouldn't imagine that without what you're doing, the process would be very painstakingly frustrating without some of the tools that you offer.

Yes, it is. I mean, there was a study that used to be conducted every year, and they do it every few years now. Where they look at what it cost a company to process, and pay a freight bill internally, versus what it does if you outsource it to a company like us.

And looking at the man hours and priorities.

The man hours, right. That is, if you can develop the in house expertise to do it yourself. A regular AP clerk doesn't know about freight, doesn't know about freight classes, doesn't know about fuel surcharges, it doesn't know about 4,000 different tariffs that are possible to price the shipment. 

Then, if you go the other way around, you got the freight guy, he goes, "I'm not going to pay any of that. It's all BS." 

Yeah. Exactly. But the last time I saw that study is that, it cost the company somewhere between $17 and $24 to pay the invoice internally.

Just each one. 

Yeah, one. And to subcontract it to somebody like us who's built our entire business around economy of scale, and things along that line, we can do it for a buck. If that's a save right there, and it's one of those things, it's hard savings versus soft savings.

That's always the fun one. But I know that, because we have just a basic freight bill management tool that they're still doing it themselves. And, even just getting the tool in front of them is, we have seen accounting teams high five after seeing a demo. I have never seen a high five and a demo I've done before. Because as exciting as I can be, it's still software on a screen. It's not a roller coaster ride, and nobody gets free tickets to the Super Bowl. So you really don't generally see that kind of excitement, but it's always awesome when you can see that manual process start to get automated. For you guys, have some of these safeguards, and these matching, and these pieces that take out, "Hey, this is 30% of my day, just this one thing. And you're telling me, I only have spent 5% of my day on that? Okay. Please, more of that."

Yeah, Exactly. That's one of the things that that we do when we're sitting down with a customer, especially when it hasn't used an outside processor before. Is that, "Hey, we're not trying to take your job. We're trying to give you more time to do things that are more critical to running your business and not chasing all of these freight bills." Right?

Right.

Would you rather cut one check a week, or send one ACH a week? Or would you rather have to book 2,000 freight bills and send out 30 checks? That's kind of the way that we try to position it?

That makes sense. I love the breakdown here. John, it's been amazing kind of just getting your insight on it, just from your perspective, and also from Nolan & Cunnings. I always like to leave an opportunity here, so I have this soapbox for all five and a half people that listen and watch. Do you have a message out to either the shipping industry, the carriers, or just anyone who might be listening from either John or from the Nolan & Cunnings perspective?

Yeah. I mean, look, the time is now. I mean, every day that goes by, you're potentially letting dollars fall on the floor. We try to treat our customers' money like it's our money. That's one thing that I try to instill in my people, that the time is now the. If you're a shipper, and you haven't looked at what you're spending, and how you're spending it, and what you're spending it with, or who you're spending it with, you have to do it now. Because the carrier certainly aren't going to come and try to give money back to you.

They're not going to self-regulate.

They're not going to self-regulate, so you need a company like us to help you. If nothing else, let us do that benchmarking exercise, let us give you that step, that peace of mind of how you're spending. Let's know if you're at market or not. Then, if you're not, then let us help you get there and let us help you with the technology that you need to better execute your shipments, so that you know you're staying in line with market. It's really the time is now, don't wait, don't let any more money fall on the floor. It's really time to look at things.

Thank you very much, John. You guys just heard from John Vigliarolo, president of Nolan & Cunnings. If you're going to argue with a carrier, don't do it alone. Bring a friend. But yes, thanks everybody for listening. Had a great time. It's been Patrick Escolas with another Banyan Technology's Tire Tracks podcast. Stay tuned for the next one they let me, until they find somebody prettier or with better hair. Thank you, guys. Bye, John.

Thanks, everybody. Bye-bye.