After a five-year stint working at Dieu du Ciel, one of Quebec’s finest microbreweries, Daniel St-Pierre decided to launch his own distribution company to tackle the inefficiencies and lack of visibility that plagued the industry at the time. His objective: build a 360-degree service company that accompanies its clients through all areas of operations, from distribution to merchandizing, exportation, and barrel rental. For Daniel, the priority has always been to offer an exceptional service to all customers. Bucke's attention to their clients earned them rapid growth: from two customers in 2017 to over 120 today.
As the company grew it became painfully apparent that the manual processes surrounding inventory and routes management had reached their limit.
“At the time, Charlie, our head of logistics was spending over 6 hours a day on data entry. He would do 16-18h shifts because of all the work involved in updating our different spreadsheets used to track inventory and manage shipment routes” confesses Daniel.
Daniel knew he needed better technology to support Bucke’s growing operations. But every inventory and logistics management software he evaluated at the time had large upfront fees, long implementation delays and still lacked key features.
“With PivoHub, we had the opportunity to build a closed loop solution where we would receive orders from our clients, manage our shipments and keep retailers informed throughout the delivery process, all in one platform.”
In 2019, Bucke became the first user of PivoHub’s newly released distribution module. Within a week, the entire Bucke team was using PivoHub. Today, all 38 employees use the platform daily. It has become the source of truth to track inventory levels across warehouses and suppliers. And building shipment routes, which once consumed entire days at the time, is now a matter of a few clicks.
“The ease with which we can now build our routes is literally life changing. I just ask PivoHub what I need to deliver in East Montreal and it shows me exactly which products I need to deliver and where. It's that simple!”
For Daniel, PivoHub provides instant access to the vital signs of his business. He can peep into inventory levels, see which shipments are scheduled and view what needs to be delivered tomorrow, all without needing to bother anyone else on his team.
“100% of the products I deliver go through PivoHub. This way I can find all the information I need in one place. I use PivoHub to invoice my clients, to determine how many cases were delivered and where, and even to offer insights to my own clients to help them improve their performance.”
Prior to joining PivoHub, the Bucke team had to work night and day to serve its 50 customers. Today, the company has been able to expand its service offering, while more than doubling its customer base to 120 clients. And most importantly, operations run smoother now than ever before.
“PivoHub has definitely cut down on more than 60% of the manual work involved in logistics and inventory management. We’ve eliminated virtually all data entry from our day-today operations, with the exception of a few of our clients who aren’t yet on PivoHub, for whom we manually transcribe orders into the platform.”
Today, Daniel looks back to his decision to trust PivoHub over other logistics service providers as one of the key enablers to Bucke's current success.
"There is no way we could operate at the scale that we do today and deliver this level of experience to our clients and our retailers without PivoHub."