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	Freight Terms Make an Impact on Profitability
	Pilot Corporation of America prides itself on being a leading manufacturer and marketer of quality writing instruments in the United States. Pilot's sales continue to grow year after year because of the quality of their products, and the innovation of their Research and Development teams. Pilot's spirit of innovation has always focused on serving consumer's writing needs. Pilot's state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities in the United States and Japan operate under strict quality control standards, ensuring the superior quality of all Pilot products. Dr. Grip, G2, Precise V5/V7 and EasyTouch are among their top selling brands.
	The dynamics of customer relationships and cost controls often require quick fact-based decisions. Recently, the operations team of Pilot Pen was faced with an opportunity to impact the bottom line. A top customer of Pilot was negotiating with the sales team and inquired about changing sales terms from FOB destination freight prepaid to FOB origin freight collect. As part of the negotiation, the customer wanted Pilot to offer what seemed to be a hefty allowance to compensate for the new terms. Sales needed to know how and what the impact would be and turned to the operations group for a quick answer.
	Pilot is a participant in Simplified Logistics' turn key solution, Simplicity. As a member of the program, Pilot has the benefit of our team of logistics and systems support staff. Together Pilot and Simplified developed a strategy and immediately jumped into action. Pilot pulled a twelve month history file of customer shipments and included the cost of those orders and the customers' preferred routing guide. Simplified applied the routing file and loaded the shipment history into its proprietary software, TrueRate and let it rip.
	Pilot was able to respond to the customer with facts, not estimates, with minimal investment of time and resources. The competitive rates of the Simplified Logistics program and the flawless execution of the Pilot team and DC operation group resulted in costs well below the customers' proposed allowance. The operations group at Pilot was able to protect the relationship by providing a fact-based review of the change.