How CTSI-Global’s Drives Growth Through Integration & IT Modernization Strategy

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

CTSI-Global, a leading provider of supply chain management and freight audit solutions, partnered with Cleo to modernize its IT infrastructure and transition to a cloud-first integration strategy. By implementing Cleo Integration Cloud (CIC) and the underlying CIC Engine, CTSI-Global successfully decoupled critical integration functions from legacy on-premises hardware (iSeries), enabling the processing of over five million business transactions per day. Through the use of Cleo’s Managed Services, the company achieved a 70% reduction in IT staff workload, allowing its technical team to focus on high-value strategic maturation while supporting an ecosystem of over 1,500 trading partner connections.

KEY PERFORMANCE OUTCOMES

• Massive Transactional Throughput: Scaled digital operations to reliably handle high-velocity data flows exceeding five million daily transactions, ensuring global supply chain continuity.

• Significant Operational Reallocation: Leveraging Managed Services transitioned 70% of staff responsibilities from routine integration maintenance to product enhancement and maturation.

• Legacy Modernization (Hybrid Agility): Optimized existing iSeries investments while simultaneously extending integration reach to the cloud for superior responsiveness and resilience.

• Accelerated Ecosystem Onboarding: Streamlined the process for adding new clients and carriers through standardized, rapid connection protocols, enhancing the overall customer experience.

• Hardened Resilience: Delivered a distributed architecture that provides higher levels of guaranteed uptime and availability, meeting stringent Service Level Agreements (SLAs) for global clients.

INTRODUCTION

CTSI-Global, based in Memphis, Tennessee, is a leading global provider of business intelligence, Honeybee TMS (transportation management system), freight audit and payment, and supply chain consulting services. What began as a freight bill audit and payment services provider in 1957 has evolved into a highly flexible integration platform that connects shippers, suppliers, carriers, and third parties by providing logistics management, freight payment/audit, and transportation management services on demand.

The company needed a way to simultaneously preserve and evolve its IBM iSeries technology investment while embracing modern cloud integration to provide real-time operational dashboards, analytics, and configurable reporting with controls for business, operational, and technical users.  
 

IT CHALLENGE

Because CTSI-Global serves over 20,000 carriers, exceeding $15 billion in transaction value annually, the company needed to craft a solution that would perform exceedingly well at high transaction volumes. Plus, with more than 1,500 connections running for different trading partners, it was critical the company provide a seamless end-to-end customer experience. But how best to achieve this within a highly on-premises IT environment?

“The iSeries is an absolute beast of a processing unit, yet like many businesses we had become overly dependent on it to run large parts of our business. But with the cloud the world has changed. In order to scale, we needed to decouple some of those functions -- integration in particular -- so we could preserve the best of what we have but also take advantage of today’s wider variety of cloud-based technology options,” said Trey Willis, chief technology officer at CTSI-Global.
 

THE SOLUTION

After some comparative research among integration technology providers, CTSI-Global selected Cleo, along with their Managed Services team, and implemented Cleo Integration Cloud into their B2B and ecosystem integration offerings. Cleo Integration Cloud is an ecosystem integration platform that provides the business process management underpinnings to deliver a constantly improving end-to-end customer experience.

“It was a no-brainer,” Willis said. “Cleo was the only option that enabled us to continually optimize our iSeries investment while at the same time extending our integration reach to the cloud so we could meet our customer-focused goals and objectives. Plus, operationally speaking, being engaged with their Managed Services team allows Cleo to do more implementation and support work for us, which frees up about 70% of my staff’s time to do other things. It’s a tight working relationship that delivers the agility, flexibility, and control we need to support all customer requests.”

RESULTS

Under Willis’ leadership, CTSI-Global has steadily been disrupting the logistics services industry, especially in recent years by modernizing its IT systems and embracing the cloud, with the primary goal always being to keep the customer experience top of mind.

The company has re-developed its IT infrastructure to expand its offerings via cloud deployment, continuously adding value for its clients who decide to outsource their important logistics management needs. By teaming with Cleo, CTSI-Global can ensure that its clients gain greater operational efficiency, more supply chain visibility, and better financial control at far less cost.

“Adding Cleo to our partner ecosystem means CTSI-Global’s support of EDI, data, and application integration is second to none,” Willis added. “Cleo Integration Cloud enables us to optimize business transactions through API-based, EDI, or non-EDI integrations, so we can integrate nearly any content provider into our ecosystem. It reduces the level of effort required by our IT staff to support integrations.”  

CTSI-Global’s B2B integration cloud integrates content from multiple trading partners and customers in order to arrive at “one version of the truth,” no matter what application or end-user platform the third party is using. Such flexibility helps CTSI-Global best serve the growing number of carriers it currently manages by allowing CTSI-Global to:

• Support the continually expanding array of trading partner network solutions and additional protocols.  

• Deliver higher levels of guaranteed uptime and availability on data translation and data transmission platforms.  

• Implement solutions faster and more efficiently through rapid client/carrier onboarding and easier connection with trading partners.  

• Ensure a highly secure, distributed and resilient architecture exceeding SLA requirements.  

• Reduce the burden on IT resources to support integration.

“We are 100% committed to remaining perpetually focused on the enhancement and maturation of our ecosystem platform, to make it as responsive as possible to our clients’ ever-changing needs,” Willis concluded. “Thanks to Cleo we are making file transfer (MFT) and electronic data interchange (EDI) processes easier, and by opening them to the API-first world of the cloud, we’re making it easier for our clients to succeed. To that end, Cleo Integration Cloud and the underlying CIC Engine has allowed us to process more than five million inbound and outbound business transactions per day. The robustness of the platform is helping us digitally scale our environment and customer experience.”