Green Mountain: Streamlining Retail Spend Management

Retailers are turning to e-commerce to increase productivity and reduce costs. They are leveraging various shipment networks to meet customers’ faster, same-day delivery demands. The transition to less-than-truckload (LTL) e-commerce has made foresighted retailers a dominant force in the distribution segment. But they need help organizing carriers and managing expenses.

This is where Green Mountain Technology (GMT) comes to the rescue.

GMT, founded in 1999, brings innovation and technology together to create a truly powerful and unmatched parcel and LTL spend management platform. Nearly 25 years of experience has shaped and tested their proven processes for the audit and pay, cost allocation, and overall strategic management of your transportation network, including using their unrivaled market intelligence to support carrier contract strategy.

Insights drawn by GMT from massive datasets enable clients to develop strategies for meeting their transportation goals, such as more efficient or lower cost shipping. No small feat: GMT often helps its shippers identify the most impactful goals for their business, and then helps their customers leverage their data to make the best decisions.

Their RFP and contract strategy solution is a great example of this partnership approach. When a shipper receives a new carrier proposal, GMT’s powerful technology quickly assesses the proposal in its entirety and rerates the shipper’s past volume to understand the full effect. GMT models proposals, down-to-the-penny, budgeting complex situations (and sometimes even imaginary distribution centers), so shippers don’t have to rely on assumptions when making the final decision.

Doing the math correctly is a big component of GMT’s success. GMT touts its audit as best-in-class, and was designated a FedEx certified Freight Bill, Audit and Pay provider this year. Its charge code-supported audit system combines carrier data, contract terms, and payment invoices to provide a clean net bill, ensuring shippers are billed appropriately per their contract. In addition, GMT’s strong carrier relationships allow them to quickly resolve billing disputes directly with carriers when issues arise. Beyond the math, gaining a full understanding of the shipper’s network is paramount. Its tech-enabled cost allocation services help shippers efficiently allocate costs to their cost centers and accurately distribute expenditure across the organization.

Many shippers do not have the tools to rerate a large amount of data. Even when they try with small datasets, errors generate and extrapolate as the datasets expand over a year. We help them analyze a large set of data at once, with zero errors.

With this level of understanding, GMT easily identifies high-value optimization opportunities (such as inventory management or distribution center placement) and helps their customers invest resources wisely. In 2021, GMT helped one customer clear a $60 million billing error by bridging the gap between shipper and carrier and analyzing vast amounts of invoice data to solve the root problem. For another customer, GMT yielded longterm results by helping them create their first-ever ship-from-store strategy. GMT continued to help them optimize their network, yielding $350 million in strategic savings across eight years.

In these examples, two of GMT’s biggest differentiators stand out: its commitment to quality relationships by doing right by all parties involved; and its ability to process large amounts of data, an astounding 1.5 billion shipments in 2021 alone. GMT’s ultimate goal here is to help its customers plan, execute, and monitor their parcel and LTL networks with greater business understanding and unmatched outcomes. The company will continue to empower countless shippers to bring greater efficiency into their workflows and increase their bottom line.