Company: Ultra Logistics/UltraShipTMS, Fair Lawn, NJ
Company Description: Provider of supply chain management solutions including logistics automation software and network optimization consultation. Founded in 2002 as a unit of Ultra Logistics, a 3rd party logistics provider, UltraShipTMS is the only transportation management system provider with extensive hands on understanding of in- and out-bound shipping. We're included on lists of top providers in trade media.
Nomination Category: Customer Service Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Customer Service Department of the Year

Nomination Title: UltraShipTMS Client Services and Support Department

Tell the story about what this nominated organization/department achieved since January 1 2013 (up to 525 words). Focus on specific accomplishments, and relate these accomplishments to past performance or industry norms. Be sure to mention obstacles overcome, innovations or discoveries made, and outcomes:

Internal service level audits reveal that a full 96% of issues/problems/challenges facing UltraShipTMS client users are resolved on the first communication and in less than five minutes! How does the Client Services and Support department achieve this improbably high level of support and customer satisfaction? Support representatives at UltraShipTMS are “wedded” to the clients to whom they are assigned; and become experts in the clients’ particular industry, serving the same stakeholders for the lifecycle of the contract from implementation onward in perpetuity. The why and how is truly an award-worthy story.

Getting raw materials into production facilities and finished products out to customers in the most efficient, cost-effective way possible requires exceptional software. However, software cannot deliver extraordinary results without client services and support personnel. UltraShipTMS is proud to nominate the Client Services department behind the transportation software solution that earned the Gold Stevie and People’s Choice awards for Transportation Product of the Year in 2013.

Some of the biggest names in food production, cosmetics manufacturing, apparel and consumer product packaging use UltraShipTMS’s SaaS-based software to manage millions of truck and container loads of raw materials headed inbound from suppliers and farms to production/processing/manufacturing facilities. The same software platform streamlines and optimizes the load building, route selection and rates paid for outbound shipping of millions of truckloads and containers of finished product to final delivery locations every year. In 2013, UltraShipTMS managed the movement of more than 3.125 million loads on behalf of clients.

Freight is in motion 24/7 in today’s just-in-time supply chain management environment and although the software is designed to largely automate the processes, there are myriad challenges facing client stakeholders – transportation, finance and executive users – as they manipulate these logistics technology tools. When a transportation management automation issue or question arises at any hour, in any time zone, UltraShipTMS customers call their Client Services partner. It’s not a random or outsourced call center worker. There is no phone tree to navigate. They’ll speak with the same assigned resource(s) they’ve known by name since the very first day of the solution implementation.

By design, Ultra’s Client Services department is structured to provide service specifically tailored to each client’s particular business. Transportation issues may be the same for all shippers, but protein producers like clients Perdue and Tyson face radically different challenges than those facing glass/packaging producers like Verallia/Saint Gobain or ladies’ apparel makers like Maidenform. This is why Ultra Client Services personnel are assigned – pre-implementation – to each new client. The assigned Client Services personnel are directly involved in the discovery phase of the implementation during which time they engage in deep interaction with the clients’ transportation, finance and executive subject matter experts (SMEs), learning in great detail about the customers’ industry-specific business rules, challenges, values, processes, corporate culture etc. When issues present themselves, the client calls directly to someone they know personally (and who knows all about their needs) to provide assistance, support and guidance.

This level of dedicated support is unmatched and is part of the reason why UltraShipTMS maintains very high levels of customer retention.

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Provide a brief (up to 125 words) biography about the leader(s) of the nominated organization/department:

Shannon Potter, Director of Application Development

Since 2005, Shannon Potter has been instrumental in propelling UltraShipTMS to the forefront of its field. Beginning his tenure as an application developer building customer and internal applications and providing support to client users, Mr. Potter’s work ethic and coding talent propelled him into the position of Senior Manager of Application Development by 2011. In that role, Shannon led software development project teams, managed server maintenance teams and provided guidance from testing through new-releases and deployments.

Having cultivated a disciplined team of developers and efficient IT processes, Mr. Potter was promoted to Director of Application Development in 2013. In this position, he has been a driving force behind the formalization of the “wedded client support” practice employed by Ultra.