On Thursday, SaaS communication solutions startup Vendorflow announced it has raised $1.3 million led by TenOneTen with participation from Amplify.LA.
Also participating in the round were such industry leaders as project44 CEO Jett McCandless, Flock Freight CEO Oren Zaslansky, Best Bay Logistics President Param Singh and former NEXT Trucking CRO Bobby Napiltonia.
With its accomplished investors, a technology team full of NEXT Trucking alumni and trucking veteran Jacob McLeod on its advisory board, Vendorflow’s goal is to simplify communication between operations personnel and their logistics partners.
“Communication between parties is a critical component of logistics, whether it’s between employees, between shippers and forwarders, or between brokers and their carriers,” Vendorflow CEO Eric Rodriguez told FreightWaves.
“But there are major issues when it comes to communication in logistics. Carriers today are expected to conduct their work and communications with their logistics partners via dozens of bespoke TMS, marketplace, and loadboard apps, which create friction and lead to app fatigue. Carriers often skip the apps and fall back to manual offline communication methods, leading to unnecessary calls and inbox overload that amount to a massive communication black box, inhibiting managerial and compliance visibility,” Rodriguez said.
Instead of forcing communication between parties through these applications, Vendorflow offers a software solution layer that sits on top of the systems logistics companies are already using, creating an omnichannel for operations personnel to reach their logistics partners by whichever channel the partner prefers, whether by email, SMS, chat applications, or call to facilitate supply chain collaboration and the capture of structured data.
“Vendorflow is closing a major visibility gap created from offline communications by bringing everyday logistics partner interactions into core supply chain systems,” said project44 CEO McCandless.
With early adopters reporting carrier responsiveness up by 90%, this added layer of technology onto a logistics company’s suite of applications helps operations employees book loads, collect shipment documents and check on the status of drivers without having to demand a specific application to be used by the carrier.
“Best Bay is excited to collaborate with Vendorflow on developing a solution that reaches carriers where they are instead of vice versa,” said Singh.
As Vendorflow adds more visibility to communication throughout every channel in a logistics company, its hope is to offer better insight into human processes, including the best way to build long-standing relationships with shippers and carriers.
With its new infusion of capital, the company looks to add engineers to its team to continue growing its product capabilities, including adding automated interactive voice response calls and integrations into chat applications like WhatsApp and Telegram, giving Vendorflow’s customers more options to communicate with carriers and other vendors by their preferred channels.
“Vendorflow provides a novel solution to the logistics-software fragmentation problem, with huge viral and network effect opportunities as more logistics professionals communicate via their platform. We’re thrilled to back another LA tech company solving critical logistics challenges,” said TenOneTen partner Minnie Ingersoll.
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