THIRD-PARTY LOGISTICS
specialreport
Getting
Marketing services specialist Archway
had its internal processes and services in
good order. Transportation was another story
… until a third-party specialist arrived.
transportation
right
WHEN JERRY JOHNSON JOINED
Archway nearly seven years ago, the
company was growing fast. Its distribution centers, located in 13
metro areas throughout North
America, were serving some of the
nation’s largest firms—Fortune
1,000 and Fortune 500 corporations. And its transportation program was in trouble.
The problem lay in the back end
of the transportation operation—
in the billing process, to be precise.
As a provider of marketing fulfillment services, Archway
spends on the order of $25 million a year to ship everything from gift cards to store signage to locations
throughout the continent on its corporate customers’
behalf. While Archway had no trouble getting shipments
out on schedule, customer billing was another story. It
was taking Archway as long as nine months to get invoices out to clients. That created complications with cash
flow, receivables, and working capital. And customers
were none too happy.
What brought matters to a head was Johnson’s discovery that not only was billing slow, but sometimes it wasn’t
happening at all. Clearly, something had to change.
SYSTEMS FAILURE
Since its founding in 1952, the Rogers, Minn.-based
Archway has made a name for itself in the marketing fulfillment services business. It has developed systems for
delivering such diverse items as gift cards, point-of-sale
materials, promotional goods, and marketing materials to
company locations, retailers, auto dealers, and the like.
Last year alone, Archway sent out nearly half a billion gift
cards to 150,000 retail stores.
Some of the services Archway provides are extremely
complex. For example, it has an arrangement with a leading fast-food restaurant chain that not only calls for it to
procure print material for the client’s 10-times-a-year
