Case Study: The 357 Company (Acquired by ALG Worldwide Logistics)

Update

As of February 2025, the 357 Company was acquired by ALG Worldwide Logistics. Benmore is happy to keep the relationship with the existing 357 Company team as they operate as a wholly owned division of ALG.

A lot of hard work from both the Benmore Team and The 357 Company went into the successful exit of one of our longest existing partners.

1. Introduction

Overview:

The 357 Company is a Freight Broker based out of Chicago and Nashville. They provide various shipping services such as Last Mile, Middle Mile, General Freight, and Cannabis Logistics. They have worked with multiple clients all over the US and internationally, providing consistent and reliable services to their clients.

Challenge:

As The 357 Company's client base grew, they noticed the need for an internal shipping portal. Previously relying completely on third-party systems, The 357 Company decided that implementing and replicating some third party services in-house would be a viable investment longterm. Furthermore, they acknowledged the potential marketing influence and draw having proprietary technology would bring in.

Objective:

Developing an internal, proprietary customer portal so that their clients could track load status and delivery analytics. Additionally, replicate some paid, third party tools internally to save costs long term.

2. The Problem

Background:

The 357 Company determined the need for proprietary technology in three key areas of their business: carrier onboarding, shipping label creation, and a shipping portal. By implementing in-house systems to automate or optimize these three key areas, they would increase their marketing draw and save costs long term.

Pain Points:

Let's break down those key areas and how they were impacting the business of The 357 Company:

Carrier Onboarding

Previously, The 357 Company onboarded carriers into their networking using paper contracts. Moving carrier onboarding to a digital experience could streamline the onboarding process and provide a better experience for carriers. It could also help The 357 Company manage their carrier network, constantly scanning for depreciated carriers and ensuring that documentation, like insurance was up to date.

Shipping Label Creation

Relying on a third-party for shipping label creation, every time an order came through, the printing of the shipping labels proved to be an unnecessary expense. Creating a shipping label system in-house was worth the investment long-term and could provide on-the-fly custom-ability unique to The 357 Company's needs.

Shipping Portal

By having to rely on external portals, the client experience for The 357 Company would see improvement in their branding, image, and customer experience by aggregating shipper order tracking under one web portal.

3. Our Solution

Discovery Process:

Utilizing our standard discovery process with The 357 Company, we initially kicked the process off by designing Figma representations of the requested systems, and iterated the requirements and features with The 357 Company until all expectations were satisfied.

Throughout the discovery phase, edge cases, design considerations, and branding concerns were all remedied before a single line of code was written. This helped ensure transparency and confidence with The 357 Company.

Proposed Solution:

We determined that building the portal using Django, HTML, TailwindCSS, and a relational database (PostgreSQL) was the best architecture for the platform. Included in this proposal was proper access control for internal staffers of The 357 Company to see a generalized shipper portal with all customer's order feeds, a dashboard to access various workflows and carrier details, and an access point to create shipping labels.

Additionally, a seamless onboarding process for customers of The 357 Company was considered, allowing the application to double as customer facing for signups, and an internal tool for common workflows.

Technology Stack:

We utilized Django, Django Templates (HTML and Tailwind CSS), PostgreSQL, and hosted the service on Digital Ocean. Third party integrations were utilized to track orders and automate document signing.

Development Process:

Due to the fast-paced nature of The 357 Company, and ad-hoc development process was utilized. Although not optimal, it was deemed necessary due to the changing requirements of the platform as The 357 Company identified features and emerging spaces they wanted to develop features for. By using and ad-hoc process, we focused on communication always ensuring The 357 Company had a support line if they needed urgent development.

4. Implementation

Challenges Encountered:

Many industry-specific challenges were encountered throughout the course of our engagement. First and foremost was adoption to logistics lingo and getting an understanding of industry practices. There has been a wave of Big VC money into logistics technology in the past 5 years, and many companies have gone under due to lack of understanding the nuances of the industry. This was an initial major hurdle in our engagement, however, once we caught on and collaborated with The 357 Company to understand the industry culture; we were able to incorporate logistics-specific nuances into our engagement.

Another challenge encountered was the fast-paced requirement iterations. As, The 357 Company evolved and grew, many on-the-fly changes were needed. It was determined that a full time team member was needed to properly support the project and we placed a Benmore team member to own the platform and provide a constant support line of all of The 357 Company's needs.

Integration with external technology providers also provided to be an industry-specific hurdle. Many technologies used in the logistics space are built on reliable legacy systems that aren't modern in nature. A comprehensive understanding of XML and EDI integrations was needed to properly create robust integrations with third parties.

Lastly, it was determined that top-heavy designs were the best route for future development. Due to the ad-hoc nature of our engagement, we determine that we should keep most iterations at the design level, rather then in development like we do with other clients. This allowed us to have our back-and-forth discourse surrounding feature discovery in a less risky design environment rather then shipping code and iterating in production.

Timeline:

We've engaged with The 357 Company for over three years.

Collaboration:

We created a standardized processes for collaboration using Loom, Slack, and Google Meets to optimize communication.

5. Results

Key Outcomes:

Through our work with The 357 Company, we have processed over a hundred thousand orders for their clients on their internal shipping portal. Similarly, we have generated tens of thousands of shipping labels and onboarded hundreds of carriers. We look forward to continuing to support their technology needs.

We have saved The 357 Company thousands in third-party software costs and allowed them to maintain ownership over their technology, boosting their valuation.

6. Lessons Learned

We learned ATON throughout the process. From understanding logistics as an industry to supporting The 357 Company in urgent development situations, we dialed into two main lessons:

SMEs and Enterprises need continued, reliable support. When they pick up the phone to call, you need to be there, you need to be a development PARTNER, not a contractor.

Top heavy design processes are best implemented with deployed services, utilize the design sandbox to prototype and migrate away from production iteration to sandbox iteration.

7. Conclusion

Summary:

We engaged with The 357 Company and met their various needs. We look forward to the continued evolution of our partnership moving forward!

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