The Problem
The company operates over 33,000 locations across six iconic quick service restaurant brands. The data collation step alone created bottlenecks before bidding could even begin. Distribution data for each brand — volume projections, supplier locations, lane requirements — had to be extracted from multiple systems and consolidated into spreadsheets manually before the bid pack could be constructed. When data was wrong or incomplete, the whole cycle stalled. When brand requirements changed, the manual rebuild consumed additional days. The 45–60-day cycle was not the time required to run a procurement event — it was the time required to prepare to run one.
Carrier communication ran offline and sequentially. First-right-of-refusal provisions across the extensive distributor network required sequential carrier outreach — wait for one carrier to respond, process the response, move to the next. Phone calls, emails, and spreadsheet exchanges led to communication delays, miscommunication risk, and no ability to track negotiation status across hundreds of lanes simultaneously. Landed cost estimation — the step that revealed the true transportation cost impact of every carrier decision — required supply chain analysts to spend days manually compiling multi-source data for thousands of products.
What Freehand Did
Freehand deployed the AI Procurement Analyst across all six brands — covering the nationwide OTR outbound distribution network from the company’s Atlanta headquarters with Arrowstream integration pulling supplier master data, customer master data, and volume projections directly into the procurement workflow. The manual data collation step that had delayed every prior bid cycle is eliminated: lane construction and lot aggregation run from live system data, not from manually assembled spreadsheets. Digital RFQ templates automate bid pack creation tailored by brand and lane — the 45–60-day cycle drops to days.
Carrier communication moved from sequential offline exchange to parallel digital interaction through the real-time carrier portal. All 140-plus carriers in scope receive simultaneous bid invitations, submit bids electronically with standardized templates, and receive counter-offer notifications — all tracked within the platform. First-right-of-refusal logic is configurable and applied automatically based on the rules the procurement team sets. The sequential communication bottleneck that had required weeks of manual coordination is replaced by a parallel workflow that compresses the negotiation timeline to days. 60% productivity improvement for logistics procurement specialists — from manual reconciliation to supplier strategy and network optimization.
The AI Procurement Analyst’s landed cost estimation runs automatically during active events, not as a post-event analytical exercise. As bids arrive from all six brands’ carrier networks simultaneously, the system models the total cost impact of every allocation scenario — lowest cost, incumbent retention, brand-balanced allocation — with instant calculation rather than days of manual data compilation. The Rate Manager Agent holds all awarded rates across all six brands, feeding directly into the audit layer for downstream invoice validation. Real-time freight spend visibility across all brands and all distribution center relationships gives the procurement team the intelligence to optimize the next cycle without waiting for the current one to close.
