A fast growing distribution operation outgrows its spreadsheet
One of the largest in-home sales companies in the United States sells home safety and improvement products direct to homeowners: gutter protection, stair lifts, walk-in tubs and showers, water purification. Its Director of Logistics and Distribution runs the distribution centres behind all of it, and that side of the business was growing fast.
The company originally ran its logistics on Excel spreadsheets. The method worked at first, but it became increasingly problematic as the company grew. Manual data entry caused frequent errors. Managing the spreadsheet with a single user became unsustainable. By 2020, the operation was managing more than 200,000 data points a year, and that number had grown past 400,000 by the time of this case study.
The core problems were familiar to any growing distribution operation. Too many labor hours went into data management and reporting. Giving multiple people access to the spreadsheet felt risky because of the errors that came with it. Moving information between departments efficiently was difficult. The director needed a solution that was user friendly and customizable, that could support multiple people working at the same time, and that could handle automation and workload management.
How the company got started with TrackVia
The company chose TrackVia’s platform because it let the logistics team build its own applications without advanced coding skills. The team started with the workflow causing the most pain: consolidating and managing the data that had outgrown the spreadsheet.
With a few clicks, the director’s team built dynamic dashboards that bring information into one place, with views built for each team’s needs. Work that used to mean manually updating and maintaining a spreadsheet now updates on its own. That cut out redundant work and freed up hours that used to go into keeping the numbers straight instead of using them.
The payoff: Real savings and a faster operation
The company saved approximately $30,000 a year in labor costs through reduced manual work and automated reporting. The platform also made data sharing and workflow management faster across the distribution center, which sped up truck loading and unloading, a place where minutes matter every day.
What kept the team coming back was the answer they got when they asked for something new. “Anytime we have a crazy idea that we think can’t be done, they say, ‘Hey, we can handle it,’” said the Director of Logistics and Distribution, of the TrackVia team.
Since building that first workflow, interest in TrackVia has spread well beyond logistics, into installation, sales, and marketing. For any growing operation that has outgrown its spreadsheets, that’s the pattern. Fix the workflow causing the most pain first, and the rest of the organization starts asking for the same kind of solution once they see what it can do.
Dynamic dashboards. Every number lives in one place, and the team builds its own views so each group sees what it actually needs.
Reporting without the rebuild. Reports for meetings, managers and reviews come straight out of the same records, rather than being assembled by hand each time.
Less manual work. The hours that went into updating and reconciling the spreadsheets go back into running the operation.
Your operation should keep getting better
More data, more departments, and more ideas will keep showing up as a company grows. The tool that got a distribution operation started shouldn’t be the reason it can’t keep growing. TrackVia combines a proven starting point for logistics and distribution operations with the adaptability to build the next idea as soon as it comes up.
See how TrackVia can help you outgrow your spreadsheets without slowing down your operation.