[00:00:00] Ryan Frankenfield: Sit in a room, lock the doors, and don’t throw the key in that room until everything is, is defined. But okay, any suggestions on who should be in the room? Welcome back, everyone, to Unboxing Logistics. I’m your host, Lori Boyer of EasyPost. Today, all my 3PL peeps out there, today’s episode is for you.
[00:00:20] Lori Boyer: This is gonna be really exciting. I’ve been, feels like lately I’ve been chatting with a lot of 3PL people. 3PL industry’s really exciting right now. So we are gonna be diving into 3PLs, specifically about your margins and technology, and really just all that kind of stuff that’s good to know. But before we do, I want to introduce our guest.
Our guest today is the one and only Ryan Frankenfield of Datex.
[00:00:53] Ryan Frankenfield: Hi, everybody.
[00:00:53] Lori Boyer: Ryan, welcome.
[00:00:55] Ryan Frankenfield: Thank you very much for having me.
[00:00:56] Lori Boyer: Yeah. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself, your background, a little bit about your company, what you do, so our audience can get to know you?
[00:01:02] Ryan Frankenfield: Myself, I’ve been in supply chain for my entire professional career.
Started on the ERP side working with SAP and purchasing, then I went and worked in a warehouse for a couple years, got boots on the ground, and then for the last about 13 years I’ve been on the technology side at Datex, which is a, a WMS provider. We specialize in third-party logistics, which is why I’m here to speak with you all but we deal with life sciences, pharmaceuticals, food, distribution, kind of the, the whole, the whole gamut.
[00:01:34] Lori Boyer: So Ryan, why supply chain? I’m always super interested in that, like, how that came about. Did you study it in school? Did you come from a legacy line? Did you just-
[00:01:44] Ryan Frankenfield: Oh, yeah, yeah. You know, my, my grandfather and his father were in, were … No, no. Why-
[00:01:50] Lori Boyer: All the way back to Rome, I like to say, you know. All the way back to Roman times they, Yeah. It’s, it’s funny when you ask how people’s journey got to where they are now. Mine I was actually a, a human resource major.
Oh, wow.
[00:02:04] Ryan Frankenfield: That was my degree, and the company that I started for after college, I worked in human resources, but they’re on the defense contracting side.
So after a little while I wanted to learn that side, which got me into the supply chain.
I was, I was managing some of the suppliers for commercial and defense airlines, which was really kinda fun and, and interesting to get into.
[00:02:24] Lori Boyer: Yeah, really cool.
[00:02:26] Ryan Frankenfield: And then that led into me getting into a warehouse and, and working on that side, so it was how to get the stuff, then it was getting the stuff, and now it’s the full gamut of, well, how do the orders come in?
How do you get the stuff? Where does it go? How do you track it? So that’s, that’s been my journey.
[00:02:42] Lori Boyer: I, I love it. I, I always think it’s, exactly like you said, super interesting how people get into supply chain. It’s not as often. Every so often, I’d say about 10% of the time, there’s somebody who went in, always knew, studied it from the beginning, or grew up around it, but most of the time we kind of get into it sort of through a back door, so that’s fun.
[00:03:01] Ryan Frankenfield: I went to University of Central Florida, and it wasn’t a degree there, but after I graduated it seemed like more and more colleges, universities wanted to get into it, and then we ended up, Datex partnered with the University of South Florida where they have a supply chain where our WMS can be in their, their courses and training and whatnot.
So it’s, it’s definitely become a much larger I guess corporate work than what it used to be blue collar.
[00:03:24] Lori Boyer: Ah, yeah, I totally agree. So if any of you out there have studied it, went through programs, or, or know of amazing programs, let us know, throw it into comment, share because I do think that’s super interesting.
Sometimes I wanna go back, I studied business in school, but sometimes I wanna go back and be like, “Maybe I should do something else with supply chain.” So okay, speaking of the industry I’ve been asking everybody who’s somebody in the industry that you really admire, or just even somebody, a role that you admire, or even somebody just in your own personal journey who’s been kind of a mentor and example for you?
[00:04:01] Ryan Frankenfield: I, I wouldn’t say it’s a particular person, it’s more so the role. That’s what, what fits me, is working with all these different warehouses, 3PLs. It’s the GM of the warehouse, it’s the operations manager, or the COO, because in 3PL particularly, each customer you take on, it’s, it’s a different business model.
Yeah. It’s a different industry. So that’s what’s, why I’ve stuck into it for so long, is each customer that you work with, you get to know a little bit about their world, their industry, so it’s not just kind of the same monotonous thing that you do day in and day out. You get to learn a little bit, a piece of that business.
So to be on the opp side of the warehouse, having to know how their customers work, what the costs are, technology, people, processes, all those things it’s, it’s a lot to handle.
[00:04:47] Lori Boyer: Yeah.
[00:04:48] Ryan Frankenfield: So.
[00:04:48] Lori Boyer: I totally agree. I, and I think it’s super fascinating. It’s, it is an, a world that is so fun because it is so varied. I, I love it.
Okay, so you mentioned Datex, WMS, you focus on 3PLs. You run implementation, right? So you do, like you mentioned, you get inside a lot of 3PLs. When you get in, and you kind of see how the business is running, knowing, like you said, that all of them are slightly different what surprises you about margins?
So we’re gonna be talking about margin today and, and where a lot of 3PLs kind of, kind of fall behind with their margins. So what, what ends up surprising you the most?
[00:05:27] Ryan Frankenfield: Probably the fact that they don’t know what the margins are. The, the complexity of some of these businesses, particularly 3PLs they, they don’t track the margins.
They think they’re operating in one business model. Yeah, we have, I don’t know, I’ll just use 10 customers, for example, and we do all things the same way, but then once you hear about the complexities of each one of those customers, all those exceptions, those eat into the margins if their rates are standardized across the board.
So unless they’re really with a magnifying glass looking at the customers, looking at the processes, looking at their rate cards to see do the rate cards match the actual realistic labor the, the margins are sometimes unknown, and that’s, I think, the, the benefit of the technology is the technology helps expose that.
It’s not fixing anything. It’s just exposing that.
[00:06:16] Lori Boyer: Yeah. So how often do you feel like it really is kind of a pricing problem versus a process or, or billing or just stuff’s leaking somewhere from certain customers maybe? How… Is that more common?
[00:06:29] Ryan Frankenfield: Almost always process from what we’ve seen.
[00:06:31] Lori Boyer: Almost always process.
[00:06:33] Ryan Frankenfield: So the, the, the rates, I mean, you typically look at those hopefully at least once a year. So usually they’re not going un- unseen or they’re not blind, but it’s the process that is, if it’s undefined, you don’t know what those, those rates are. For example, if I charge, say, 15 bucks for each pallet that comes in the door, but you don’t know how many times you’re touching that pallet to get in the door.
If I touch it once, let’s say it’s 15 bucks. You touch it five times- Divide that by five, now you’re at $3 a pop. So understanding the process first before you can actually define those rate cards is, is super critical.
[00:07:08] Lori Boyer: And I would think that the process is gonna be slightly different when you have so many customers with different needs.
You know, some of them are gonna be you know, somebody that’s constantly doing a whole bunch of small things, and, and you may have a different customer who has really specific route needs, or is that, like, a challenge of trying to fit a lot of different customers’ needs into a single process?
[00:07:31] Ryan Frankenfield: That’s, that’s the fun about being in 3PL, is you need the flexibility.
It’s, it’s a must. But the closer that you can standardize those operations, obviously the more handle or more control you have on the margins. I- we talk about EDI in our world, and we always say it’s a, a four-letter word. It’s just because EDI, everyone thinks EDI is the same way. Each trading partner’s gonna do things the exact same way, and it’s kind of like 3PL.
You can say you do things the same way, but each, each project, each trading partner is completely different. The standards are different. Processes are different. So unless all of those things are, are defined on paper and you have a true flow of A to Z, that’s where all those unknowns start to rear their ugly heads, and that’s where the, that’s what eats into those margins that we were talking about.
[00:08:15] Lori Boyer: Can happen so fast, too. So where do you see money actually leaking? So, you know, what are maybe the two or three kind of hotspots or areas that nobody’s watching?
[00:08:27] Ryan Frankenfield: I mean, the, the obvious is gonna be what’s not billed for. So, you know, “Oh, yeah, I did this once for this customer. I had to do it again. I had to do it again.”
If you’re not capturing that, that activity, you’re going unbilled. Once, once the exception becomes the norm and you’re not billing for that norm, that’s, that’s the easiest one to identify.
[00:08:46] Lori Boyer: Ooh, I love that. Don’t let the exception become the norm.
[00:08:51] Ryan Frankenfield: With the exceptions, it might turn into rework, right? So if you think, “Oh, I’m just doing this exception once or twice,” if you’re not doing it on a consistent basis, there could be rework involved, which is just further eating those margins.
And then finally, the, the, the rates. So, yeah, if you look at those once a year, but knowing in the 3PL industry, things change so quickly, like you mentioned. If your customer has a new process, a new sale, it’s seasonal, those rates need to go hand-in-hand with those seasons or, or changes, and if they’re not looked at on a, on a regular basis, that’s gonna definitely eat into those margins, too.
[00:09:26] Lori Boyer: I’m gonna share another four-letter word, that is spreadsheets. Maybe it should be a four-letter word. I know I have a lot of 3PL friends out there, and sometimes spreadsheets start rearing a little bit of kind of those homegrown systems. And, you know, I love a good spreadsheet myself sometimes, but I, I think that is where things kind of get lost.
So how do you, without being lost in spreadsheets, how, how do you find those exceptions? Like you mentioned, oh, the exception may become the norm. Like, how do you track things in a way That the complexity doesn’t overwhelm everything, and you’re using, you know, manual processes. You’re trying to figure things out.
How do you get things set up? What do you recommend so that things don’t get lost?
[00:10:18] Ryan Frankenfield: With spreadsheets, there’s no one there to smack your hand if you do something wrong or if you fat-finger something, right? Let’s say I, I’m using my, a spreadsheet to track inventory. I, I use spreadsheets too, I’m guilty.
[00:10:30] Lori Boyer: Yeah, I know. We’re all, every person out there, I’m sure everyone listening right now no matter your industry, no matter your little niche, we all have a few little spreadsheets we’re in, so.
[00:10:39] Ryan Frankenfield: It’s a great tool.
[00:10:40] Lori Boyer: Mm-hmm.
[00:10:40] Ryan Frankenfield: But the tool is only as good as what it’s intended to be for, right?
Yeah. So a spreadsheet can only go so far. I actually had a customer that we implemented, this is probably two or three years ago now. They were completely paper-based, completely Excel. So they’re entire- they had three million square feet of warehouse space, all ran on Excel. So at the end of the day, I’d take all of my papers, I’d give them to Lori.
Lori then goes one by one, updates her Excel sheet. That’s manual labor, right? If Lori fat-fingers something, or if I wrote something down on a piece of paper that you couldn’t read, now you’re making guesses. That all just goes into a spreadsheet. There’s nothing there that is standardizing the way that you input that data.
There’s nothing that’s gonna catch those exceptions. And that’s the value of, of having a WMS is if the process stan- is standardized, you have to do it a specific way. It’s repeatable, it’s measurable. And if something does get fat-fingered, you’re gonna capture that.
[00:11:34] Lori Boyer: Yeah. I love that. Makes me think, ’cause I know in talking with Datex that, you know, I’ve heard of clients that you have that, you know, their invoices jump 30, 40% after going live with using technology instead of spreadsheets, right?
I would love to kinda get into that. What, what were those 30 to 40% … You know, what type of issues were being missed? What, what was the operation doing before what was happening there?
[00:12:00] Ryan Frankenfield: Most WMSs can do the same things, right? I can receive, I can move inventory, I can pick, I ha- I may have rate sheets.
It’s, it’s not the WMS that is this magical wand, it’s that you’re forcing somebody to capture what you’re doing in the WMS. I need to capture how I receive, I need to capture the rate for that receiving process. “Hey, customer, do you do physical counts for your warehouse?” “Yes.” “Okay, but I don’t see a billing line item here for how you charge your customers.”
“Oh, we only do it once a year. We’re not gonna charge them for it.” Well, that’s missed out, that’s missing out on revenue. So the WMS isn’t a, a magical wand, but it helps expose those rates that are missing. It helps expose those exceptions that you’re doing, it helps expose those exceptions that become the norm.
So the WMS is just giving you the transparency of what your operations are doing. But regardless if you’re using a spreadsheet, you’re using a WMS, if you don’t have your processes defined, that’s, you’re already setting yourself up for failure
[00:12:56] Lori Boyer: Absolutely. No, that totally makes sense. I wanna talk a little bit about rates.
You know, parcel’s kind of a moving target right now, I would say. Peak season, peak surcharges they’re always big. And, well, honestly though, Ryan, they’re, like, tend to be, we got this 5.9%, but it’s, like, all the extra surcharges, all the accessorials, all the other things that get built up. How do 3PLs best handle dealing with kind of those moving targets of rates rate shopping, making sure you’ve got enough carriers?
3PLs kind of, everything they have is just expanded, right? They’re just like a regular shipper, but expanded by 20 different business models. Yeah. So what, what suggestions, tips, advice do you have for our 3PLs out there?
[00:13:49] Ryan Frankenfield: For, for our parcel, we use EasyPost. We partner with EasyPost, so it’s very easy to capture those different rates based on, do you want it they’re the quickest, do you want it they’re the cheapest, do you want it based on what the customer wants?
With the WMS, what helps there is you can add a surcharge on top of what the carrier’s actually charging you. So if you have a default surcharge built in, let’s say 3%, 10%, whatever that value is, you can’t control what the carriers are charging you, but you can control what you’re charging your own customers.
[00:14:18] Lori Boyer: Can’t control what the carriers are charging you, but you can control what you’re charging your customers. And sounds like what you’re saying, a lot of times that’s an undercharge. We’re not charging enough.
[00:14:29] Ryan Frankenfield: Yeah, if, if you don’t have that surcharge built in, so let’s just say, you know, your, your seasonal rates are gonna change from your carrier, but if you have your, your line item defined on your rate sheet to your customer, we’re always gonna charge you, whatever, X, that’s our standard.
If that seasonal change is bumping up, but bad, right? You’re not getting that revenue, you’re losing on that margin. More often than not, it’s not gonna go underneath what that rate that you’re charging on. So having, having those things defined in the WMS can help call out where those surcharges are being put in and making sure that you’re capturing the correct margin for that.
[00:15:03] Lori Boyer: Yeah, that totally makes sense. So a lot of 3PLs are looking to scale, and I see 3PLs struggle a little bit as they again expand. And you know, they’re going they maybe were a standardized process, and they’re trying to scale profitably. What’s the difference, I guess, that you see between the ones that kind of scale profitably, do that well, and those who end up absorbing all those exceptions, like, as you mentioned?
I guess sort of what’s a line between being flexible and unprofitable?
[00:15:39] Ryan Frankenfield: It’s, it is a fine line, right? With, with 3PL, you have to be flexible in order to get the customer in the door, but what you could set yourself up up for failure for is if you’re taking on a project that you don’t know if you can actually deliver profitable, right?
I’m, right now I’m, I’m in charge of doing a lot of migrations from our legacy product onto our cloud-based solution, and we’re getting to go back under the radar, under the hood of these customers to figure out how you’re using the WMS. And come to find out, that’s where we’re drawing a lot of gaps is, “Hey, you built this process for your customer, but that was three years ago.
That was a year ago. That was three months ago,” and they’re doing things completely different now. So unless those processes are, are defined, I know I feel like I’m repeating myself, but if unless that process is defined, you don’t know how successful you’re gonna be. So for the 3PLs that you have to be flexible, but if those processes are defined, you have a standard, you have a baseline, then you can help to identify what those margins will be if you take on this highly complex customer, if you take on this highly seasonal customer.
[00:16:44] Lori Boyer: It, it makes me think, do you have any kind of good KPIs or, or industry standards on how often you should be kind of reviewing your process for each customer? Is that an annual thing? Is it a quarterly thing? W- what do you feel like would be kind of a, a good rule of thumb?
[00:17:04] Ryan Frankenfield: With 3PLs, just because the, the nature of the business, it changes so frequently, the more, the more frequent you can review those things, the better.
The, the more successful 3PLs that I’ve seen, it’s not just one person in charge of reviewing rates or reviewing processes. They have almost like an internal project manager that takes on some of those accounts. Think of a, a customer success manager or account manager in the sales world. Even on the, on the warehouse side, that becomes beneficial because if they kind of know the heartbeat of that customer or that process, or if it’s seasonal, they can make sure that that process is staying defined.
Then communicate that down to their ops team, then things are staying standardized. We’re making sure we’re capturing that revenue accordingly. You’re not having that billing leakage that tends to rear its ugly head sometimes.
[00:17:50] Lori Boyer: Yeah. Oh, I like that idea of kind of a role there that sort of helps track, and that project manager kind of person who keeps everybody a little bit sane.
So you were talking about flexibility, but I also feel like, you know, processes are great- But a lot of customers, often I guess customers pick a 3PL specifically because they might have some weird exceptions or some special needs, or it’s too complex for them to do it themselves, right? How do you balance having a process but also being flexible or, you know, as somebody was, having good customer support, creating a great experience?
How do you balance that?
[00:18:29] Ryan Frankenfield: At, at Datex, our WMS is extremely flexible. That’s part of our, our upsell, is that we can be as complex or as configurable or as standardized as your operations may be. So the way that I usually use an analogy is I can go and I can buy a car. Your car is gonna get you from point A to point B.
But do you want leather? Do you want cloth seats? Do you want cruise control? Do you want, you know, the V8 or the V6? All of those things, that’s up to the consumer, right? And it’s just like 3PL. The consumer is driving the 3PL business, so the 3PL has to be willing to take on that flexibility, but again, they still need to know how different is this customer compared to the way that we’re able to operate, and do we need to make changes?
Is it technology? Is it hardware? Is it process? Is it, hey, my building is too small for this customer. Is there space available where I can go and get additional space and bring on that customer as well and open up a new side of that business? It’s, it is a very fine line for trying to define that sweet spot of flexibility versus standardization.
[00:19:32] Lori Boyer: Okay, I’m glad you brought up Datex specifically, and we’re gonna talk. This isn’t about Datex, but about technology in general, okay? I, we, we talked about the fact there are those who have, or fully working spreadsheets. They’re probably the minority, right? Most people have some sort of technology in their 3PL these days.
But it is hard to switch technology. It is hard to get a new technology, maybe add to your tech stack. It is anything… Sometimes I feel like 3PLs are a little bit like the house of cards and, and people don’t want to do something that’s gonna make it all fall apart, right? So I wanna talk about technology implementations.
You’ve been through a lot of these since you work with technology and 3PLs. Are there any issues that are typical that will make a technology implementation just, you know, like, this is gonna go badly, maybe before it’s even begun?
[00:20:28] Ryan Frankenfield: I haven’t mentioned this yet, but it’s, it’s process, for sure. Process.
‘Cause even, I know, I know. So whether it’s we’re implementing a, a net new customer- I’m taking on a migration, or it’s a customer that’s been with us for a while and they just have a new project that’s coming on, now we’re gonna handle that with a change request. If the process isn’t defined, the requirement’s only as good as what we, we can get from the customer.
[00:20:51] Lori Boyer: So do you mean the process of implementing the technology or the process they have with working with their customers?
[00:20:58] Ryan Frankenfield: Process with working with the customer. We need to define the requirement. What, what solution do you need as a, as a customer in order for now the technology to serve that solution?
[00:21:07] Lori Boyer: So before you even go to look for technology, you need to sit down and make sure you have a really well-defined process for your customers.
[00:21:15] Ryan Frankenfield: 100%. That is, that is typically where we’ve seen implementation. That, that’s the biggest, divider or differentiator with implementations is if you have your processes defined, then when it comes time to buying technology, you can clearly define those requirements with that vendor, and then that vendor can say, “Yes, we can do this.
It’s out of the box. Oh, yep, we can do this with some changes on it.” But the, the vendor can only pull in so much information, right? So if, if you’re telling me, “Hey customer, you want a car with leather seats,” great, we’re gonna go and build it. But if you tell me, “Well, the leather seats need a massage, it needs to be cooling, it needs to be heated,” well, that’s a different way of implementing.
So having those clearly defined requirements or processes upfront are gonna make that go live date become that much more smoother and successful.
[00:22:04] Lori Boyer: Right. So let’s say that you approach somebody, so, or somebody came to you and they said, “Ryan, we are struggling. We gotta get some technology. We’ve got, we know that stuff’s leaking.
We’re, we’re losing margin. We’re doing all kinds of excep- exceptions have become the norm,” and you see that they don’t have processes documented. What, what do you recommend they do? Like, how do they go about that? What, what would you recommend? What, what advice do you have for those people?
[00:22:32] Ryan Frankenfield: Sit in a room, lock the doors, and don’t throw the key in that room until everything is, is defined.
[00:22:38] Lori Boyer: Okay. Any suggestions on who should be in the room?
[00:22:41] Ryan Frankenfield: Yeah, so as soon as the implementation starts, that’s where I typically get involved with now capturing the requirements from the customer. Having the, the right people in the room is critical for how those requirements get delivered, how those requirements become to fruition, and, and ultimately a, a go live with the customer.
So if you have, let’s say, a finance person in the room that doesn’t work in the warehouse, your finance person isn’t gonna tell you how you should be receiving, what are those exceptions, how do we handle those pallets. If I have a ops person that works on the floor, they’re driving the forklift, they’re likely not gonna be able to tell me how they should be billing for those things, right?
So having the right people in the room to drive those conversha- conversations is very critical for making sure those defined requirements get delivered the right way the first time. ‘Cause rework is a killer. We know it’s, it’s, it’s a natural thing, but the less rework the better, the higher your margins, happy everyone’s gonna be.
[00:23:38] Lori Boyer: Yeah. Oh, I love that. So I have a question. Let’s say you have a 3PL who has multiple locations. Do you need to have a process, different process based on each location?
[00:23:50] Ryan Frankenfield: Not necessarily. I mean, it, it ultimately depends on the operation. You might have one customer that might operate out of those different warehouses, so now when that order comes in, what is, what is determining how to go to that other warehouse to go pick from, right?
Is it based on proximity? Is it based on pricing? Is it based on inventory levels? So it’s, I don’t think there’s a right or wrong answer on process depending upon the facility. Sometimes facilities are set up a certain way to run. Maybe one is focused on manufacturing or kit building. Another one’s focused on just, just distribution.
Another one might be 3PL focused, so-
[00:24:24] Lori Boyer: Or if the layout’s really different, right? Like, that’s what I wanna, like if you have a really different layout situation.
[00:24:30] Ryan Frankenfield: I’ll throw an example of of a customer I saw earlier this year. They had two facilities. One was brand new. In the brand new facility, their, their racking was eight pallets deep.
So if you have a ful pallet in, pallet out operation, having those roller racks with eight pallets deep, that’s okay, right? You’re likely not gonna miss inventory, have expiring product. But if you’re in the, the case picking business where your operations are a little more complex the labor is a little higher, if you have pallets eight deep and you’re having to go grab something in the middle of that, think of the labor that it’s taking to pull stuff out and then put stuff back in.
So yeah, definitely the, the layout of the warehouse should help drive, or the potential of the layout, ’cause the layout is al- also flexible should help drive where those customers should be in those processes that follow.
[00:25:16] Lori Boyer: Yeah. Oh, great advice. Let’s talk about 3PLs maybe who should not be looking at technology yet.
Is it just those who don’t have defined processes? Are there any other, like, caveats if somebody’s listening and they’re like, “You know what? Warehouse technology maybe is not what I need right now. There, there are problems elsewhere.”
[00:25:35] Ryan Frankenfield: The, the growth becomes a, a, at a certain point, think of a, a bell curve, right?
There’s a certain point where you have to invest in technology to continue your growth, right, to continue that vision. So I can’t say whether it’s a good or bad thing to buy technology, but buy– when you do buy the technology, again, have your processes defined. The vendor may be able to help uncover some of those things, but they may not be the experts in uncovering those things.
So that’s sometimes where being on the implementation side, I have– I do have a lot of experience, but my experience is based on what I’ve seen in the past. I’ve been around for, let’s say, 15 years in supply chain. I don’t have the 30, 40, 50-year knowledge that some of these other people have, and those people are set up for more of the consulting side.
So although we on the, the WMS vendor side can help extract those requirements, again, we’re only as good as capturing those requirements and delivering those. So if we’re, if we’re missing some gaps there and the customer’s expecting we’re, us to be this magical wand- that might not be the best decision to, to buy the technology yet.
[00:26:34] Lori Boyer: Ryan, everyone’s looking for a silver bullet.
I don’t think anyone’s found one out there yet.
[00:26:39] Ryan Frankenfield: I’m still looking too.
[00:26:40] Lori Boyer: We, we can come up with it together, and then we’ll all be happy. So this has been really great. We’re just out of time about, but I do wanna ask you before we go, if there’s somebody listening who runs a 3PL, works in a 3PL you know, what advice do you have?
What is something you would want them to go and do in their warehouse, in their facility, with their team after listening to our, our episode today? What, what is one thing that can maybe help them stop the leakage, get a little bit more revenue, be more prepared for the upcoming peak season? What advice does patented Ryan advice do you have for them?
[00:27:21] Ryan Frankenfield: The, the silver bullet is what you’re looking for. The silver bullet, and we’re ready for it.
I would say interviewing the people that you work with or that maybe you don’t work with. I think those, those can definitely help expose the, the gaps, whether that be process or revenue leakage or margins.
For example, if I’m, maybe I’m a CSR at a warehouse, and I know how my orders get entered in, and I know how to make sure they get completed and the customer gets billed. But if I go and speak to that warehouse floor operator, and I hear, “Hey, this one customer, stuff’s always getting unloaded, and I’m having to restack,” and that’s labor that you’re not capturing, there’s revenue leakage right there that I could’ve captured.
Or on the flip side, if I’m the warehouse worker, maybe I wanna go interview somebody that’s in the office or that’s upstairs because they may not have the boots-on-the-ground knowledge of what’s happening. Maybe they did a year ago or six months ago, but as you know, in this industry, things change so quickly based on many, many factors, so making sure that you’re just in tune with those different roles I think would very, would help very much.
[00:28:22] Lori Boyer: Unboxing Logistics family, I want you to put a time on your calendar this week or next week, block it off. Think of maybe one area that you’re feeling frustration, or you’re feeling confusion, or you’re feeling, you know, maybe you’re just not understanding what’s going on there, and set up a one-on-one call, or, or get down there and see somebody in person.
I think that is such good advice, and one that we just don’t take enough time to just really have a conversation with someone, understanding what’s going on. Fantastic advice, Ryan. Okay, if somebody wants to, you know, learn more about Datex or just connect with you, pick your brain about 3PLs or technology implementation or WMS how can they contact or learn more about Datex, and how could they get in contact with you?
[00:29:11] Ryan Frankenfield: You can go to our website, you can look up our WMS. We’re a technology provider. For myself, I’m, would be happy to speak with, with anybody via email or phone call. Hopefully you can put my contact informationin here.
[00:29:25] Lori Boyer: We’ll throw it into the, Excellent, so I don’t have to read out my very long last name.
[00:29:29] Ryan Frankenfield: That’ll be easier for you all to, to get a hold of me if you want, if you want to.
[00:29:32] Lori Boyer: That sounds great. Okay. Thank you again, Ryan, for being here. This has been a really great discussion, and I am excited for our 3PL audience listeners out there to move forward and maybe get a little bit better of a process here and there.
[00:29:48] Ryan Frankenfield: Thank you so much, Lori. It’s been a great time talking to you.
[00:29:51] Lori Boyer: We’ll see you all next time.
