The Road to Bountiful: Local Bounti Grows with Owlery's TMS

When Simeon Arseniev joined Local Bounti as Director of Logistics, his mandate was clear: build a robust national distribution network from the ground up. But the industry's legacy processes posed obstacles:

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• Manual processes and legacy mindset — the transportation network ran on Excel spreadsheets; tracking, dispatching, and recordkeeping required tedious, error-prone manual updates and relied on back-office "tribal knowledge"
• Resource constraints — building routes for milk runs and last-mile deliveries could take up to three hours a day and could only be done by a handful of veteran team members; if a spreadsheet broke, the process ground to a halt
• Scaling for growth — with multiple sites across the U.S., including new operations in Washington and Texas, Local Bounti needed greater carrier coverage and the ability to manage contract rates, spot quotes, and complex routing while controlling costs

• Route optimization — Owlery worked closely with Local Bounti so the route-building feature could automatically determine the most efficient daily runs, almost like a custom-built system. Route-building time went from a few hours to just seconds with "a few button clicks."
• Streamlined carrier management — onboard, compare, and manage multiple carriers in one central system; direct-tender loads and run RFPs instead of juggling email quotes and spreadsheets
• Automated Walmart Master BOL — as business with major retailers expanded, Owlery's configurable BOL tool eliminated manually creating critical shipping documentation several times a week

• Massive time savings — route planning, once a multi-hour daily chore for specialized employees, now takes as little as five minutes
• Better carrier rates — added carriers, compared spot rates, and locked in favorable contract pricing. "We can manage more vendors with fewer resources," Arseniev said.
• Scalability and future readiness — with automated route building and documentation, Local Bounti can confidently expand to new locations and onboard employees
• Bolstered team morale — once-skeptical staff warmed up quickly after seeing how reliably the platform replicated and improved their manual processes. "They love seeing that it just works."

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Looking ahead, Local Bounti plans to leverage Owlery further for formal RFP events, refined reporting, and advanced analytics.