case study

Sharpening Sales Capabilities with Proprietary Software

3 min read

An international freight company was overloaded with leads and lacked an automated way to forecast and match capacity to incoming inquiries. Most companies might think additional staff is the solution. Spark Equation approached the problem with an engineering mindset and designed an efficient and sustainable software solution that increased the number of processed leads by over 4,000 a month, increased customer satisfaction, improved operational efficiency, and increased fleet utilization by 15%.

at a glance

Results

Increased Lead Processing by over 4,000 a month
Enhanced Day-to-Day Operations
Improved Communication Processes
15% Fleet Utilization Increase
Custom Intake System
Increased Customer Satisfaction

Solutions

Proprietary System
Email Parsing Engine
Internal Load Boarding Engine
Capacity Matching Engine

The situation

A logistics company became overwhelmed with leads. They not only lacked the staff to answer and process those leads but were also left with additional unmatched capacity with incoming potential business. While the volume of new business was encouraging, the specific shipping needs of each inquiry were manually forecasted and matched with driver and vehicle capacity. Even with hiring additional staff, the logistics company realized they needed a new data-driven system of productivity that would not only act on the leads but more efficiently capture revenue with advanced predictive analytics.

The logistics company turned to Spark Equation as an external service provider to engineer a custom technology solution.

The solution

Collaborating with the company’s management team, Spark Equation conducted an in-depth diagnostic to analyze the underlying problem and establish a set of metrics that would lay the foundation for a tailored solution.

Through a refined process of requirements gathering, stakeholder perspective consideration, risk assessment, and agile story mapping, the Spark team developed a strategic and tailored approach for the solution. Following a truly agile methodology, Spark Equation utilized a dual-track scrum management approach.

This technique allowed each phase to be built on the momentum of the one before it. Through the discovery track, the objective was to validate ideas quickly and efficiently, while the delivery track was used to build, test, and deploy production-ready code. Each track had its own specialized and dedicated team to ensure a continuous workflow and a desired solution.

As a result, a highly advanced and customized lead processing system was engineered and integrated with an internal load board and a capacity planning system.

The result

The product was designed to extract shipment information from the lead system and match it with the number of loads being dispatched to a specific region. The lead processing system categorized and organized daily email leads in the intake board by, parsing emails, extracting data, transforming emails, and loading them back into an organized and lead matching system. By categorizing leads in this format, the integrated capacity planning system allowed the logistics company to forecast their demand and target shipment routes for the highest operational efficiency and fleet utilization.

Our approach Our clients' success is our success

Technologies used:

Conclusion

One of the many ways that companies can overtake their competitors is by continuously investing in their software development. This can help increase operational efficiency, customer satisfaction, and open doors to potential revenue. A great engineering partner is essential and can make the difference between simple automated lead processing and streamlined, optimized revenue generation.

Building Software That Works

* We take our clients’ confidentiality seriously. While we've changed their names, the results are real.

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