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UniGroup lands a 'big win' with its new transportation management system

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Updated Nov 3, 2021

Making phone calls. Sending text messages. Keeping team members all on the same page can be tough in the trucking business,  particularly when you’re dealing with older technology.

That was the case for UniGroup (CCJ Top 250, No. 25), which in 2019 decided it was time to start considering a replacement for an older transportation management system that was looking increasingly obsolete.

“The system itself was a bit outdated green screen technology and we saw that as a competitive disadvantage within the business,” said UniGroup Executive Vice-President Scott Kluesner. “So we set forth a group to explore what the options were to develop logistics-oriented technology.”

[Related: Software battles empty miles and increases revenue]

UniGroup, based in Fenton, Missouri, is mostly known as a household goods carrier through subsidiaries United Van Lines and Mayflower Transit. But the 33-year-old company has other brands including UniGroup Logistics, which offers supply chain solutions through global services like less-than-truckload, truckload, brokerage, flatbed, final mile, intermodal and third-party logistics.

To help improve its competitive edge in logistics, UniGroup partnered with Rose Rocket, a Canada-based software company that develops transportation management software by the same name. The two companies went to work in 2019 to tailor a system for UniGroup that would help smooth out the kinks common to the supply chain business.

The UniGroup Logistics Platform is adding up to greater operational efficiencies according to Javier Medina, agile product owner at UniGroup. 'The platform allows us to have visibility to our planning, to our drivers, to our trucks that allows us to make better usage of our equipment and that way we reduce operating costs and leverage our assets better.'The UniGroup Logistics Platform is adding up to greater operational efficiencies according to Javier Medina, agile product owner at UniGroup. UniGroupKey stakeholders, including brokerage agents, agreed to participate in a pilot last year. It didn’t take long to see that they had landed on a much more efficient system that was easy to use.