CartonCloud Logistics Index 2024 Mid-Year Outlook

It’s a very well-thought-out program, and anybody who’s been warehousing or has been involved with warehousing in their careers will totally see the benefits of having CartonCloud or using CartonCloud.

My name is Jimmy Skodras, I’m the vice president of operations and logistics at Rockstar 3PL.  We service two sectors of the hospitality industry here at Las Vegas: hospitality and the nightlight side. Dry goods, custom goods, manufactured goods, broad and locally, and we handle a lot of the transportation and production of beautiful set pieces that you see at all the fabulous events that they put on throughout the year.

We were using a WMS system that just was not with the times. It was very antiquated and we were looking for another solution. Something that was cloud-based, something that would eliminate paperwork overall.

You’re always gonna have concerns because of the previous nightmare situations you deal with. After figuring out how simple it was to use, it was such a breath of fresh air to actually just feel that we actually found a program that works for us.

Prior to that, I had looked at probably 5 or 6 other WMS systems that would work for our warehouse here. None of them really did what CartonCloud does for us today. 

The implementation process lasted a few weeks, and the fabulous people at CartonCloud were just very hands-on with helping us understand the program first and then marrying it to our specific needs under the Rockstar 3PL.

Creating a good culture and a nice environment that uses technology, that treats people fair, that just treats employees like family is what we try to implement here at Rockstar. 

It has saved us so much time and it’s helped streamline the process of just creating a very positive workflow and a seamless workflow within our warehouse and I’m very grateful that we found CartonCloud, and it's just been working for us ever since.

My name's Deanne, and I'm the founder of Lexington Logistics. I founded the business 3 years ago, and the reason why I did this was because, there was a gap in the market.

We actually work with a lot of boutique clients. They could be fashion brands, gift, homewares, or lifestyle brands.

From having 3 clients to over 30 clients,  we are an extension to their business. It's something that is really important to us, that we aren't a complete third party — we are part of their integrated process and an extension to their operation.

That's what drives us every single day.

To hand over your brand to a third party is a big thing, and we want to make sure that we can actually uphold their values, their brand messaging, their key themes — to be able to then ship out their product exactly the same way that they would do it in-house.

When we do partner with our clients, one of the key features is having this software system, for them to be able to see that yeah we are serious around how we actually function as a business.

We do have a broad spectrum of omnichannel clients, there is a portion that are e-commerce clients — so  they run their stores through software
systems like Shopify, or Woo Commerce.

When we onboard a client, the first part of that
is to ensure that we have CartonCloud set up,  to make sure that their integration is spot on.

Once we have everything connected, they actually
don't need to really touch what we do and how it operates. We're able to integrate our systems
together— so it's a complete, autonomous process.

For us to take them on board, and see them flourish and actually start to do 20, 30, up to 100 orders a day — that's actually why we do the work that we do.

We actually provide access for them into the
system so it brings them closer together,  they don't feel like they are completely separate from their brand.

So the transparency is there, they are  able to see our stock levels within the warehouse, with the orders that are being placed and processed.

It's simplified our business.

It's... yeah, it's been fantastic so far.

I've seen the retrospect, working with other businesses in implementing different software— they do it so late in the game, you know, and it's such a big catch-up.

So, working with the guys at CartonCloud, I was a little client. At the time, I only had probably 3 clients on board. They didn't see that as an issue.

It was just — ok, what can we do to make sure that we set up some really good systems and processes now,  enabling you to bring on clients quicker,
and much more effectively in the future.

There are so many different things that a system can provide you that you actually didn't think was possible.

That was such a crucial part in identifying what could we be doing differently or better — but also letting go of the things that we were doing that we may not have been doing as productively.

When you're actually looking for a software system, you have to make sure that it's right for your business.

By having CartonCloud come on board, it's been probably one of the best moves that I could have made, and I don't think we would have
won as much business as what we do.

Beer, wine, cider, we don't do anything else, we don't do general freight. We stick to what we know and we try and offer really great service to our clients. Pound for pound we want to be the best.

There was a period of time where we didn't really have any warehouse system, we're archaic in how we're operating so we still had everything on paper. If those pick tickets don't make it back to the office, you don't charge your client. You're running the risk of not getting all the revenue that you've physically done. The invoicing process was very cumbersome, very labor intensive, and we acknowledge that there was a shortfall in our operation. We had a US based cloud software, which was okay but it wasn't paperless, it was a bit hard to get information. So we did a bit of research and found CartonCloud. I saw Rob at a trade show, he gave me a CartonCloud pen and said, you shouldn't need this. I took it away and I've gone, yeah, that's right.

We started rolling out CartonCloud and fully integrated everyone onto the new system, and the training behind that has been a matter of hours. Within a day they're all over it, know what they're doing. Just from a simple cost perspective we've been able redistribute our staff and what they do in different areas. So we're saving between 40 and 60 hours a week on admin, but we're doing 30 to 50% more work. You got the time and money you've saved there, plus the ability to invoice our clients in a more timely fashion. There's been a huge impact business. People are much happier to come to work knowing that we're running in an efficient way. Our staff are satisfied, our clients are really happy and looking back, I didn't think we've been able to achieve what we've been able to achieve the last 12 months without having the software there. Overall, it's just been a really great implementation from CartonCloud.