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Reflection

275x274SolutionsTableLean Freight Performance Via Timely Freight Post-Audits

Now, more than ever, retailers are facing uncertain profits in a perfect storm of a slow recovering economy combined with rising inbound costs. While all indicators point to an economic recovery, retailers must continue to explore all avenues of expense leverage in order to either grow or maintain profit performance. Specific challenges retailers face with their inbound  supply chain and overall profitability include:

1.       Rising diesel costs ( up $.32 over LY)

2.       Uncertain hour of services ruses, CSA

3.       High fuel and assessorial surcharges

4.       Driver shortages

5.       Board demands to document green initiatives

6.       Uncertain climate regulatory related issues related to the trucking industry ( i.e. weight and size limits)

7.       Tight labor resources related to supply chain activities

8.       Valuable transportation performance related data is buried in freight invoices



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In order  to help retailers mitigate these challenges and mitigate their usual supply chain risks, Compliance Networks has developed a unique audit process  focused on either eliminating or recovering avoidable supply chain costs. Known as Reflection, Reflection provides near-real- time performance audits of the retailer’s inbound supply chain. True actionable supply chain data that was once buried in the retailers freight invoices now receives a high level of enterprise visibility.

Retail profitability increases as hard to find avoidable costs which once only appeared on income statements are discovered earlier in the process and are either mitigated or recovered. And finally, as the retailer better understands the performance of their inbound supply chain and gains visibility to the process, supply chain days are dramatically reduced resulting in millions of dollars in annual savings to the average sized retailer.


The overriding challenge for retailers in the past has been the inability to extract valuable data contained on freight invoices. To alleviate this challenge, Compliance Networks employs a strategy of software and professional services to capture the data and provide visibility to common, avoidable and preventable supply chain costs. Some of the most common avoidable supply chain costs retailers incur on their income statements include;


1.       Failure to ship collect per TMS instructions
2.       Truck ordered, not used
3.       More than two shipments per week
4.       Early Shipments
5.       Late Shipments
6.       Routed Carrier not used
7.       Failure to consolidate and ship from one origin


In summary, visibility and compliance to the inbound transportation process will yield greater profits in a 30-60 day window for most retailers. Compliance Networks provides a turnkey solution that requires no capital investment and provides immediate relief to the rising fuel and inbound expenses retailers are facing today.

Since 2000 Compliance Networks has been the leading provider of vendor performance optimization solutions.  Compliance Networks enhances its best-in-class offerings with the addition a freight audit facility to its existing offices in Sugar Land, Texas. The new facility will be dedicated to expanding CN Services by initially offering transportation audits to the retail supply chain. "Demand for Reflection, our near-real-time Transportation Audit solution, has been unbelievable," commented Greg Holder, CEO of Compliance Networks, "Adding to our existing facilities was an easy decision for us,¨ Holder stated,"as we are find our customers can no longer wait 3-12 months for transportation post audit feedback and recoveries. They do not believe it is fair to their providers and they want to identify and communicate problems as quickly as possible so performance is improved and profit leaks are stemmed immediately. We also find that in the current business environment companies are asking individuals to do more with less; causing stress, strain, and increasing error rates. An automated near-real-time transportation audit like Reflection offers many companies the ability to recover costs associated to violating transportation rules. Best of all, it is a no-risk proposition to our clients."

Reflection is a best-in-class automated transportation performance audit for retailers who seek to identify and recover the cost of failures in the inbound supply chain. Offered to retailers as a near-real-time post freight audit. The benefits of Reflection are realized days after the freight movement, as opposed to the norm, which is often measured in not quarters or years. There is no capital investment for the retailer and only minimal requirements for the IT organization. Benefits include:

- Automated identification and communication of transportation failures
- Automated chargeback calculation and transmission of transportation failures
- Business intelligence related to transportation movements and performance
- No software to install
- Limited IT involvement
- A time-to-value of 30 to 60 days
To learn more about the proven benefits of rCMS Reflection and the new CN transportation audit service and facility, contact Richard Wilhjelm at 877-267-3671 or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .