ProTrans: Supply Chain Management Solutions

Craig Roeder, CEO & Founder

“It was an evolution in the making,” says Craig Roeder, CEO and Founder of ProTrans, as he recollects the rollercoaster ride, from 1993, for the logistics industry as well as for his company. Roeder started ProTrans in 1993, in an undistinguished trailer, with merely three employees on the payroll. Today it is the epitome of logistics perfection, standing tall with more than 1,000 employees and 26 locations across the U.S., Mexico, and Canada. From humble beginnings, through tumultuous times, to being a market leader, over two decade of the company’s journey is a fair reflection of its founder. And, an impressive clientele comprising of several Fortune 1000 companies defines the reflection of both.

"ProTrans has become a leader in the manufacturing-driven logistics marketplace with freight consolidation, transportation management, materials management, and cross-border processing capabilities through its 3PL solutions"

As businesses in the manufacturing and automotive sectors began looking for a comprehensive solution— a total package that can do more than just tendering and dispatching— Roeder instantly knew that ProTrans’ roadmap would be aligned in the direction of an extensive and rich product offering. And third-party logistics (3PL) was the undeniable solution that had the potential to answer these customer-driven necessities. ProTrans diligently ramped with technology at every significant milepost, allowing itself full play in the times of evolving needs and the subsequent innovations in the logistics industry.

Today, ProTrans has become a leader in the manufacturing-driven logistics marketplace providing freight consolidation, transportation management, materials management, and cross-border processing capabilities through its 3PL solutions. Most importantly, through dynamic visibility, the company has changed the way its customers look at their supply chains.

“We have four unique parties in the supply chain equation; the customer, supplier, end-distributing customer and carriers. So our solutions are designed to give real-time visibility to all the stakeholders,” says ProTrans’ CIO Allen Phelps. The company's web-based transportation management system, Optimiz TMS provides, what Phelps calls, “enterprise visibility” into a pool of dynamic supply chain information. Considering the rapid activity that a consignment undergoes, Optimiz TMS is designed in a way that it doesn’t wait for the user to login to the portal and view the status. Instead, “we push the information to our customers directly, rather than generating fixed-interval reports,” Phelps adds.

The company's web-based transportation management system, Optimiz TMS provides ‘enterprise visibility’ into a pool of dynamic supply chain information

Optimiz TMS has a set of pre-defined customer-specific supply chain configurations in place that limits the need for custom programming. Contemplation of the fact that each customer is unique has helped ProTrans in building a customization process where all they need is to add business rules specific to a customer. “We have over 40 different e-business rules,” explains Phelps. “As our clients operate their supply chain, we keep applying or modifying the rules to configure and fine-tune their TMS instance. In a nutshell, the software conforms to the business processes of customers versus trying to make the business model adhere to the TMS.” This contributes heavily to the consensus that ProTrans’ customers cultivate—ProTrans is indeed a ‘perfect fit.’

One of the most important functions of Optimiz TMS is advance shipping notice (ASN) management. Customers can share their release information, and ProTrans’ team ensures that the release quantities are validated at the supplier’s end. Instead of waiting for days for the freight to reach the destination, followed by prolonged verification procedures, ASN allows the process to be done at the very first step.

Along similar lines, ProTrans removes the hassles of rate-shopping where customers look for the best possible fleet provider with the least price. First off, ProTrans allows its customers to send their end-customer contracts and then, they can rate shop with ProTrans’ existing carrier capacity or their pool of contracts from the centralized system through a secure customer-driven portal. This enables customers to manage transportation costs effectively.

Underpinning all these efforts, Optimiz TMS acts as a repository that stores customer information such as material requirements planning and master data including parts, suppliers, plants, stock count, location, and GL codes. With the right analytics and business intelligence tool, that can process the wealth of information, customers can derive meaningful insights to reduce manual intervention in the movement of any material and also prevent damage to goods. ProTrans understands the enormous potential that advanced business intelligence holds; and this is why a significant amount of R&D resources are expended toward enhancing their TMS suite to accommodate technologies like big data, analytics, and mobility.

“We are constantly looking for the newest technology and finding ways to incorporate them in the logistics ecosystem,” says Roeder. For instance, the IoT is proving to be a whole new ball game for the logistics industry. For its part, ProTrans has invested in RFID and bar code technologies, where a unique traceable chip is embedded in the asset for real-time visibility into the supply chain. The freight recipient can track the whereabouts of the consignment at any time, and check whether the data is accurate, as it does not require drivers to log in the details. The system also keeps them informed about shipment ETAs and delays.

To keep up with their value proposition of being a dynamic player in the market, ProTrans’ R&D lab keeps pushing innovative ideas to be applied to the customer’s transportation network, mobile devices, or software. In fact, part of their ‘dynamic capacity’ stems from the fact that ProTrans’ team comprises of university graduates, fresh out of college, who are always brimming with bright and new ideas. “The name ‘ProTrans’ fits our purpose because we have a college-level professional staff running a transportation company,” concludes Roeder.

- Samuel Woodward
September 06, 2017