Company: SimpleTire  

Product: Matillion ETL

Location: Pennsylvania, United States                              

Industry: Automotive                                   

Website: simpletire.com

Challenge

SimpleTire wanted to develop a new solution for identifying the best carrier partners, establishing the most profitable contracts, and accurately auditing shipping performance.  

Solution

Using Matillion alongside Snowflake and AWS, SimpleTire built a platform called TRIM. With TRIM, the company can conduct its own audits, ascertain which carriers are best suited to its operations, and access the insights needed to ensure contracts are adhered to.  

Results

Using TRIM, SimpleTire was able to identify a six figure auditing error, simplify its carrier partnerships and contracting, improve data integration processes, increase operational agility, and provide its finance teams with more accurate insights.

The Challenge – simplifying complex carrier relationships

SimpleTire is a B2B technology-enabled platform that connects all the participants in the tire industry to drive better consumer experience and improve efficiencies.  Manufacturers, distributors, tire installers, national retailers, clubs and fleets all engage on the SimpleTire platform to help deliver an improved experience to the online consumer - all the way from researching to buying to installing tires. 

Proprietary technology, actionable data insights and unique talent all relentlessly focus on reinventing tire replacement to make it "way simple, way better."

Shipping tires across the United States requires specialized processing and sorting, an area most transportation auditing companies don’t have experience with – and SimpleTire was eager to build the necessary process. As part of a plan to reduce costs, the company created a scalable platform called TRIM to help internal and external stakeholders optimize shipping strategies and complete their own in-house audits.

"We realized that we were paying for excess services that could be more effectively and efficiently brought in-house using Matillion and the rest of our data platform," says Adley, SimpleTire's VP of Analytics. "By doing so, we could gain more control over our billing data and achieve greater transparency and responsiveness, while also improving our financial return on investment."

The Solution – optimizing processes and cutting costs with Matillion 

SimpleTire developed a new data infrastructure based on Matillion, AWS, and Snowflake to help it store and maintain its carrier rates. This infrastructure allowed the company to replicate its paid auditing services, and with better results. In just three days, it had created an MVP that processed the prior 12 months’ worth of shipping data. As a result, the process identified a six figure discrepancy which the auditor had missed. 

The TRIM platform SimpleTire built is a multi-functional portal for auditing, data manipulation, reporting, and optimized shipping suggestions. It allows SimpleTire and its partners to model shipping prices and finance projections, and provides a user-friendly contract negotiation portal so they can clearly see how proposals will impact shipping costs. 

With the simplicity of Matillion’s interface, SimpleTire Senior Data Analyst, Noble Keyser was able to upskill in less than a week and build the new MVP for TRIM in three days. Recreating all the potential billing scenarios the platform would require for auditing within Matillion took less than a month.

“Thanks to Matillion, we can integrate new ideas or data requirements from partners faster than a typical auditing company,” says Noble. “And the built-in modularity allows the solution to be tailored to our stakeholders’ specific needs without compromising the base functionality.” 

The new tool has allowed SimpleTire to dramatically simplify its carrier partnerships and contracting. In 2022, the company embarked on a project to find the best regional carriers within its top ten shipping states. Using the Carrier Compare & Contracting module of TRIM, and the robust modeling processes built into Matillion, the company was able to effortlessly compare potential new carriers against its current network. With accurate, timely insights, it could establish each carrier’s potential volume, their revenue opportunities, as well as weaknesses in pricing, service zones, and delivery performance. 

“The results ultimately gave us a carrier who could best service us and our non-conveyable products,” says Noble. “We then re-ran the simulation with multiple pricing options and presented the option which yielded the most beneficial impact to both SimpleTire and the regional carrier.” 

TRIM also had a role to play when the selected regional carrier began providing billing statements, with the auditing function immediately identifying errors with nearly every shipment. In one instance it was able to identify that the carrier had charged for an accessorial that had been allocated a 100% discount in the contract. 

Benefits – more accurate insights, faster, and at scale

From start to finish, the TRIM platform supported by Matillion has provided copious amounts of data insights that allow SimpleTire’s teams to not only sign the most beneficial contracts, but to enforce their attributes.

The company’s new regional carrier, identified by the platform, has continuously provided cost savings and met the operational standards promised. As a result, SimpleTire plans to open up the platform’s capabilities to its hundreds of partners throughout the United States.

“Matillion is an excellent ETL tool that provides both technical and non-technical users with a flexible platform to build data integration workflows,” says Adley. “Technical users can take advantage of Matillion's ETL engine and sophisticated data transformation capabilities to build complex use cases. At the same time, non-technical users can leverage its visual interface to easily build automation and transformations without the need for coding.”

Using Matillion, SimpleTire has been able to transform its organization, improving its data integration processes, increasing operational agility, and providing its finance teams with more accurate estimates. The platform’s built-in scheduling also allows for automation at all hours of the day, giving users access to real-time data. The result is improved productivity and reduced lead times for external stakeholders. 

“Overall, Matillion's ability to simplify and automate data integration has saved us significant amounts of time and dramatically reduced errors, leading to improved efficiency and accuracy,” says Adley Amzovski, SimpleTire’s VP of Analytics. “Additionally, we can now easily integrate new data sources and make changes to our integration processes as needed, which means we can effortlessly adapt to changing business requirements.”

About SimpleTire

Based in the United States, SimpleTire is an online platform that allows people to source replacement vehicle tires and installation from the comfort of their own homes. The company has over 300 tire brands, can deliver to 21k+ shops nationwide, and promises price reductions of up to 50%. Since its inception in 2012, the company has served over eight million customers in the United States.