Case Study: Gain Supply Chain Visibility With A TMS

When Bon-Ton Stores, Inc. recently acquired the Northern Department Store Group (NDSG) from Saks Incorporated, its sales nearly tripled, store count was doubled, and four DCs were added. The acquisition, although a great growth opportunity for the retailer, left Bon-Ton with a large amount of shipping information (such as inbound freight costing, load distribution, and freight payment) to manage.

"The Bon-Ton footprint now reaches across 23 states, and along with this, we have approximately 2,500 vendors operating from 3,000 shipping locations to contend with," says Robert Hook, divisional VP of transportation at Bon-Ton. Before Bon-Ton acquired the new stores, the retailer manually entered shipping and receiving data into an older PC-based TMS and interacted with vendors and carriers via e-mail. This approach had become labor-intensive and offered little flexibility. For instance, when an employee needed to track a shipment, they had to sort through their e-mail inbox to find the correct order. For a retailer as big as Bon-Ton, this process was very time-consuming. The retailer began searching for a new TMS before it acquired NDSG to better manage the transportation routing and shipping information.