Customer Spotlight

Kallipr

Lawrence & Hanson is an electrical wholesaler operating nationally, with over 160 branches across Australia. See how MachShip has helped align their operations while enabling branches to still operate independently.

Lawrence & Hanson is an electrical wholesaler operating nationally, with over 160 branches across Australia. Rob Pawsey is the National Logistics Manager, managing the logistics networks throughout the country.

“We’ve deployed MachShip across our entire branch network. Currently, we have over 175 branches set up within MachShip. We’ve got almost 1,100 users and leverage over 50 carriers on the platform,” said Pawsey.

With that level of scope and diversity within the business, Lawrence & Hanson needed a platform capable of streamlining and integrating operations nationally while still enabling branches to handle things autonomously.

Standout features & UX

“We went through the tender process. So, we had 4 or 5 different freight management systems presented to us,” Trikoulas said.

“The thing that stood out with MachShip was the vendor integration side. The volume of vendors and freight companies that MachShip was integrated with. Pricing was obviously pretty competitive. They were probably the two main factors. And, of course, the UI/UX side of things as well.”

“The UX is super impressive. It’s very simple to use. Really easy to navigate. It’s flexible and does a lot of the things you need it to do. MachShip is definitely doing an amazing job on that side — specifically with some of the more complex things that we have to do.”

Simplicity in a complex industry

“I think one of the main things is just the simplicity associated with implementing MachShip. A lot of the other integrations that we’ve gone through, or onboarding a third-party platform, that’s always been quite complex. There’s a lot of engagement and a lot of touchpoints. The MachShip implementation was really quite easy.”

“It was very clear on what we needed to give, when we needed to give things. And it was really flexible with some of our timings as well. Overall, when I look at the size of the project that we rolled out — which was a full ERP and the FMS system which took about 18 months. I’ll never think of MachShip as the complexity behind that. That was the free kick.”

Keeping customers in the loop

“The main feature that’s been a lifesaver is the ability to send tracking links back to customers. That’s not something we had the ability or access to do before. Now, we have MachShip pass all that information back into our system, which we then send out to the customer.”

“So, customers having real-time tracking when we’re dispatching goods — that’s been game-changing. We’ve had a lot of positive feedback about that. It also just makes our life easier because we’re not getting the amount of return calls that we would have, asking ‘Where’s my package? Did it get dispatched?’ Etc.”

“One of the biggest things we didn’t have with our old freight management system was a lot of the reconciliation capabilities that MachShip provides. The automated rate cards updating, the ability to input an invoice from one of the freight companies, and then have MachShip tell you where there’s a variance. That’s saving us a lot of time because that was previously a manual activity.”

“But I think just the more expensive carriers that we can actually use now are helping a lot. Previously, we had 2 or 3 onboarded that we had integrations with. But a lot of our outbound logistics were done directly through the supplier portals. So, we would have to log into StarTrack, for example, raise a consignment and put the information back in our system. That’s all fully automated end-to-end at the moment, which is great.”

A support team that’s always on the ball

”A lot of the work we did was with James from the implementation team. Honestly, that was a breath of fresh air, given how complex ERP implementations can be. We were quite delayed from an overall project perspective because of other complexities. But one of the things that was great was that I didn’t have any reservations or failure points with the MachShip team. Every time I’d send through a question, it was answered really quickly.”

“They would fix little bugs and defects that we had. So we were able to continue testing with the overall project without being bottlenecked by MachShip at all. On larger projects, typically, you find a lot of bottlenecks where you’re dependent on an external integration or a vendor. With MachShip, if we had an issue, we’d just send it through. And within 12 hours it was solved — which was really nice, because I almost didn’t have to worry about it.”

“Any time something isn’t working as expected, I’ll still raise those support tickets with the team. We haven’t had many front-end support tickets on the integration side. Everything has worked quite smoothly. The only thing I’ve had to raise I think since launching is if a carrier isn’t enabled, how do we do that? Or if a user’s access isn’t working. And when it comes to those basic queries, they’re resolved quickly.”

“Overall, the engagement model that MachShip has. If you ask a question, you don’t wait three days to get an answer. You get an acknowledgement. You hear back within 12 hours. That was really easy and really simple.”

Customer Spotlight

Kallipr

Lawrence & Hanson is an electrical wholesaler operating nationally, with over 160 branches across Australia. See how MachShip has helped align their operations while enabling branches to still operate independently.

Standout features & UX

Simplicity in a complex industry

Keeping customers in the loop

A support team that’s always on the ball

Download our Comprehensive Freight Profitability Handbook

Download Our Comprehensive Freight Profitability Handbook

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