How Saddle Creek Logistics Wins New Business with Cleo

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Saddle Creek Logistics Services, a leading third-party logistics (3PL) provider, utilized Cleo Integration Cloud (CIC) to modernize its data-intensive fulfillment operations and manage complex retail compliance mandates. By consolidating multiple business lines—including omnichannel fulfillment, warehousing, and transportation—onto a single cloud-based integration hub, Saddle Creek gained the agility to onboard enterprise-level retailers in weeks rather than months. The platform supports the high-velocity exchange of mission-critical documents, ensuring 100% visibility for their clients across the "Order-to-Cash" lifecycle.

KEY PERFORMANCE OUTCOMES

• Retail Compliance Mastery: Successfully automated the complex EDI requirements for major retail partners, eliminating manual data entry and ensuring adherence to strict shipping and labeling mandates. 

• Accelerated Time-to-Value: Slashed partner onboarding timelines by leveraging Cleo’s library of pre-configured connectors, allowing Saddle Creek to activate new revenue streams faster.

• Operational Visibility (CIC Cockpit): Provided internal operations teams and clients with a "single pane of glass" to track every transaction in real-time, reducing the volume of status-check inquiries.

• Elastic Infrastructure: Established a scalable integration foundation that handles massive transaction volume surges during peak holiday seasons without performance degradation.

• Strategic Flexibility: Utilized Cleo’s blended service model to allow in-house teams to manage daily mapping adjustments while relying on Cleo’s experts for high-level architectural support.

BUSINESS NEED

Saddle Creek Logistics Services is an asset-based third-party logistics provider headquartered in Lakeland, Florida. The company specializes in designing and delivering omnichannel logistics solutions for manufacturers, retailers, and e-commerce companies. Saddle Creek’s customers utilize its integrated logistics services to get their products where they need to be quickly and cost-effectively.

Saddle Creek Transportation, the company’s transportation division, offers both asset (fleet) and non-asset based transportation services across the U.S. Saddle Creek Logistics was seeking to replace a legacy EDI system with an integration tool that would enable the company to connect to customers and partners in any file format and with any communications protocol. The desired solution had to be fast, accurate, and reliable, and it also had to scale with the business.

IT CHALLENGE

As a high-volume logistics organization with 44 locations across the U.S., Saddle Creek had to support various customer protocols, including AS2, FTP, SFTP, HTTP, HTTPs, and Web Services (SOAP), and all manner of X12, EDIFACT, flat file, XML, and spreadsheet documents. The accurate and timely delivery of everything from purchase orders to shipment confirmations to advance ship notices, as well as load tender, tender accept, carrier status, and carrier invoice messages, was critically important. But Saddle Creek Logistics’ previous technology vendor could not integrate with newer versions of Saddle Creek’s warehouse management system (WMS), nor did it support multiple file formats. When the Saddle Creek Logistics leadership team attended a Truckmate (TMW Systems) transportation conference where Cleo was exhibiting, team members suspected they had found a cost-effective platform with the comprehensive integration capabilities they had been looking for.

THE SOLUTION

Saddle Creek Logistics replaced its legacy EDI systems with Cleo's data transformation solution in Cleo Integration Cloud and can expertly meet the diverse and challenging integration requirements of its customers, retailers, suppliers, transportation, and third-party integrators.

“We can connect with customers and partners how they want to,” said Tom Loftus, director of data integration systems, Saddle Creek Logistics Services. “EDI was typically one of the longest IT project tasks to be completed when it came to new customer startups. With Cleo, we have reduced development effort and achieved faster time to value.” 

Loftus added that Saddle Creek Logistics’ its expanded integration capabilities have helped earn new and repeat business for the company.

“The ability to provide accurate data and process automation has led to increased efficiency and improved service levels while keeping our resource costs down,” he said. “We can implement simply and quickly to meet customers’ and operational needs, and it’s easy to see that our integration capabilities have become a differentiator for Saddle Creek.”