Learn how a leading logistics company turned into a logistics-as-a-service platform to improve freight network and drive faster ROI.
XPO Logistics is one of the largest providers offering less-than-truckload fright transportation to companies across the globe. Headquartered in the USA, XPO Logistics has a footprint in 34 countries and holds reputation in the market with clients including the top companies of the world – IKEA, Home Depot, Lowe’s & Amazon to name a few.
The company underwent substantial growth and diversification, expanding their services across North America, thus increasing the demand for robust technology systems to streamline their operations. An overarching challenge for XPO was their reliance on third-party platforms for crucial supply chain components, including warehousing, same-day delivery, and national assembly.
Learn how Icreon as their strategic transformation partner helped them optimize their logistics landscape through a unified logistics management system.
One of XPO’s fastest growing units is its Last Mile Logistics Division. It provides multiple retailers the ability to give their customers the option of same day shipping, home assembly & electrical appliance installation services. With over 30,000 daily shipments, XPO was struggling to intake custom orders from over 50 retail customers to process in multiple warehouses, dozens of distribution centers, across thousands of drivers across the country.
One major hurdle that XPO was facing was the dependency on third-party platforms for key components in the supply chain - warehousing, same day delivery and national assembly. The question then became – what if XPO owned the entire tech stack of the supply chain instead? Icreon and XPO did a deep dive analysis into what a product like that would look like, and what would be required to deliver on it.
XPO Logistics needed to differentiate themselves and stimulate new client growth. In order to differentiate in what was soon to be a competitive logistics market, it was time for XPO Logistics to build their own IP. They needed an end-to-end integrated platform that would modularize their business and allow them to act as a logistics-as-a-service company.
The Icreon team consulted the founding management team of the company to help them stimulate new client growth. Together, the team came up with a dire solution- rethink all fulfillment processes from the grounds up. Icreon mobilized a team of consultants, developers, and designers to think through the process by speaking with every core member of the supply chain team. The team spent 15 weeks to understand the process- going on trips with contract carriers, spending time in multiple warehouses, talking to sales and marketing teams, and even going through entire order processing – and identified the major breaks and siloes created within the business.
The output was a blueprint of building their own IP – an end-to-end integrated platform that would modularize their business and allow them to act as a “logistics-as-a-service” company. Icreon ideated a ‘universal connector’ software that can be loosely coupled into any business process for any client. The platform would act as a flexible business playbook – anytime XPO wanted to support a new customer, the platform would seamlessly fit in with the business processes at hand.
Over the course of a 3-year relationship with the organization, Icreon has built a number of mission critical systems with XPO –helping the organization manage corporate acquisitions, increase their operational capacity, and acquire new clients. Icreon worked together with XPO to build out a scalable mechanism to integrate various third-party systems into a centralized application dashboard. This integration work enabled the business to seamlessly on-board new clients and legacy systems into a single view, giving the business clarity on how operations are going on a second-by-second basis.
Our work with XPO was enabled by a standardized process for dealing with disparate internal and external platforms. Icreon worked with XPO to first define an inventory of the business processes, applications & data transfer mechanisms that needed to be consolidated. This enabled us to prioritize different events based on financial benefit for the company. From there, we split into 3 agile development teams, each responsible for a different system that needed to be integrated into our middleware architecture. This involved engineering, test automation & deploying the solution. Finally, Icreon built out a common library of interfaces that would allow other vendors and engineers to leverage our middleware to pull and push information from different systems.
Icreon has also been good at working with other development partners and vendors. Collaborating with other teams and connecting disparate parts of the business was a piece that impressed me about Icreon.
The Icreon team developed an integrated platform to modularize XPO Logistics' operations, moving from third-party dependencies to first-party tools. This collaboration enhanced efficiency and included an analysis of cost-benefits and ROI, ensuring investment decisions were based on tangible returns.
Icreon’s role in this project was to develop a single platform on which all customer-facing applications could be built. This would allow XPO to build new features quickly without having to worry about scaling or maintaining multiple platforms.
Icreon worked with XPO Logistics to develop a multi-channel communication strategy that would enable them to engage their customers effectively through multiple channels. Icreon also helped them create a library of content that could be used across all channels and provided training sessions on how best to use these tools effectively.
Icreon worked closely with XPO executives to understand their business goals and objectives for the new site. They also conducted extensive user research to determine what visitors were looking for when visiting logistics sites. This research allowed Icreon to create an intuitive user experience that focused on improving conversion rates by providing relevant information upfront on key pages and making it easy for visitors to find what they were looking for quickly and easily.
Icreon was able to work with XPO to revolutionize their integration architecture. By standardizing how they integrated with customers 3rdparty POS platforms, the Last Mile Division was able to reduce costs during new customer acquisition and have drivers take more efficient routes to complete fulfilments on a daily basis. The end-to-end integrated platform enabled XPO Logistics to act as a logistics-as-a-service company. It modularized their business and allowed them to scale their operations with less risk.
The platform also provided a single source of truth that unified data from multiple sources across multiple clients. This created an open architecture that gave XPO access to valuable insights about their customers and partners – making it easier for them to identify opportunities for growth and improve customer service across all of their clients.
This transformation led to an 80% increase in market capitalization. XPO secured $150 million in fresh contracts through Last-Mile services, and they now efficiently deliver over 30,000 e-commerce goods daily across the United States. Also, through streamlined processes and dedicated efforts, XPO Logistics was now able to complete new customer on-boarding in 3 weeks, a decrease from the previous 8-week timeframe.
“One of the biggest strengths of Icreon has been taking our business context into account and considering the wide range of users and departments that interface with our technologies on an ongoing basis.”
Christopher Colom, VP, Customer Experience, XPO Logistics
