In freight brokerage, the quoting process can either sharpen a team's edge or quietly bury it in manual work. For Sage Freight's mid market team, it was the latter. Nearly every customer relationship ran through email, and every quote meant digging through third party pricing tools, cross checking internal data, then circling back through Excel just to figure out whether a load had even been won.
Add in the enterprise side of the business, where teams were juggling multiple TMS platforms just to keep up with spot boards, and the picture becomes clear. A lot of good work was buried under a lot of manual process.
Josh Smith, Director of Customer Success, saw the friction from both sides:
"Biggest problems we had here at Sage was all the different platforms that our customers use, just from a spot quoting perspective. It was very tough to navigate, switching between multiple TMS systems and just being efficient."
Gloria Watts, a Mid Market Account Manager who spends roughly 60 to 70 percent of her day working through customer email, put it plainly:
"Life before Manifold was very chaotic. There's a lot of time exchanged going back through my day, making sure I didn't miss anything, which can be very hard to do in a sea of emails."
Patrick Jones, Senior Director of IT, saw the cost from a data standpoint:
"They spent countless time and energy in email, then going to third party vendors to understand pricing, comparing internal data, responding back, and keeping up with it all in Excel just to understand: did they win it? Did they log it?"
Enter Manifold.
Once Sage's team had a single place to pull quote data, rate freight, and see outcomes in real time, the day to day changed fast.
Chris McDonald, VP of Mid Market, described the shift:
"Since we've been with Manifold, it's completely changed the game. Before, we didn't have the data to actually use. Now we do. We can see it in real time: what we're missing, what we're not missing, which has essentially increased our spot wins."
For Gloria, it meant no more losing the thread across a flood of quotes:
"I can collect every single lane a customer might be asking me about and rate each one all in one go, submit it, and clear out a whole batch of loads to quote."
Emily Trusty, Senior Account Executive, felt the platform's consistency the most:
"You don't have to have all these tabs open for different customers to put in bids. You can train your eyes on where to look in Manifold, because no matter what portal it is, it's all going to look the same to you."
And for Kelly Sullivan, VP of Customer Success, the value showed up in speed and focus:
"Manifold has given us a way to really track what we're seeing from our customers, at the opportunity level. We can pivot strategically every single day and apply that directly to what we do, rather than just looking month over month."
The impact showed up across the business:
Beyond the platform itself, several speakers pointed to something less obvious: how Manifold's team operates. Chris McDonald noted the difference in responsiveness:
"They're very responsive when we need something put in quickly so we can pivot our operations. Mac and Oliver are on it immediately."
He also called out something most vendors don't do:
"I don't think you guys get enough credit for bringing things to us before we have to bring them to you. A lot of tech vendors are retroactive, telling you when something's broken. I don't get that feeling from Manifold, or from Mac or Oliver."
Emily Trusty pointed to the team's background as the reason:
"The fact that Mac and the team have had brokerage experience is very beneficial, because they recognize the same issues we see. We don't have to explain why we want an update. He already knows."
Patrick Jones connected that experience to the product itself:
"Understanding their background, where they came from with Convoy, understanding that they're developers first, not just running a company. That's what really separates them from a lot of other competitors."
And Kelly Sullivan summed up the relationship:
"Working with Mac and the entire team has been phenomenal. I would put them above any other tech provider we've worked with."
Today, Sage Freight runs a faster, more visible, more data driven operation, and going back isn't really an option.
"The idea of going back to any of the systems we used at Sage before Manifold is going to be an immediate headache. I don't like to think about it."
Want to learn how Manifold can help your team quote smarter and win more freight? Schedule a demo today.