Descartes’ Mobile Solution Enables Tony’s Fine Foods to Provide Real-time Visibility into Where OS&Ds Occur

Tony’s Fine Foods is the largest privately-owned distributor of deli, bakery, food service, specialty, and perishable products in Northern California.

Tony’s Fine Foods’ fleet travels more than 130,000 miles each week, offering distribution services from Seattle and Portland, down through the coasts and valleys of Salinas, Bakersfield, Los Angeles, and into Western Nevada. As a business that has been around for more than 75 years, Tony’s Fine Foods takes customer service seriously.

Tony’s Fine Foods selected Descartes’ easy-to-use mobile solution, which eliminated the need for a costly and complicated customization.

The CIO of Tony’s Fine Foods, Mark Geery, is dedicated to implementing technology solutions that help the company reduce costs, improve service and allow for seamless growth. Like many food distributors, Tony’s Fine Foods had a cumbersome, error-prone invoicing process. Geery and the team knew there had to be a solution that could minimize or eliminate the amount of paper and resources used for its two-part invoicing system.

Additionally, Tony’s wanted to increase their delivery accuracy even with numerous mixed-stop pallets, packages were still occasionally misplaced or delivered to the wrong location. This jeopardized the client relationship and also caused the business to issue credits for overages, shortages or damaged (OS&D) items.

The real-time communication capability in the solution, including electronic signature capture, is able to replace the standard industry two-part invoice and the vast resources dedicated to processing these documents. The Descartes mobile solution is flexible and enabled Tony’s to create individual driver tasks including deliveries and pick-ups, while mobile forms allowed them to collect unique information, such as pallet count or temperature.

By giving drivers the tools to scan each package upon pick-up or delivery, Descartes’ mobile solution enables Tony’s Fine Foods to provide real-time visibility into where OS&Ds occur, sending an audio alert if a delivery error is about to occur. After deploying the solution, Tony’s Fine Foods realized an impressive return on its investment, in addition to increased overall customer and driver satisfaction.

Using Descartes’ technology, Tony’s Fine Foods was able to save approximately $115,000 per year by removing two-part invoicing procedures and eliminating processing costs. In addition, an estimated $117,000 per year was realized by preventing OS&Ds.

While it cannot be directly quantified, the biggest return on investment was due to the satisfaction of addressing core challenges and making significant strides towards achieving a perfect delivery invoice.