DHL and BY are deploying Flexis, a container-loading software, for sequencing for 3 DCs involved in
Chemical/Automotive Manufacturing for the first time in July 2026. DHL wants to feel confidence that Flexis
can scale to and beyond peak season operations without downtime and cutting corners.
Flexis downtime leads to
Operational costs to manually manage accumulating freight, labor, and yard congestion
Financial costs from triggering customer penalty clauses
IT rework costs to perform root cause analysis and resolution
Veeam Data Center Availability Report 2014 (survey of 760 CIOs at 1,000+ employee
firms): unplanned application downtime occurred ~13 times per year; 12 used as a conservative year-1
estimate. Note: 2014 data — verify against a more recent source if possible
ATRI (independent 501c3 research institute): avg detention fee ~$64/hr per truck;
$250/hr assumes ~4 trucks idling at the dock
Customer penalty costs per incident
Avg SLA chargeback per late shipment ($)
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Published ranges ($50–$500/shipment, higher for automotive OEMs) come from vendor/3PL
blogs without named studies — set from your actual customer penalty clauses
% of blocked shipments triggering chargebacks
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No single reliable benchmark for this exact rate; depends on which customers have
OTIF/penalty clauses — set from your contract mix
Customer goodwill / relationship cost ($)
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No industry benchmark available — estimate based on account value and relationship
risk
IT rework costs per incident
IT / vendor support hours per incident
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Vendor MTTR data suggests high-severity incidents take 1–4 hrs; 8 hrs assumes added
diagnosis + validation. Set from your own incident history or Flexis SLA
IT fully-loaded hourly rate ($)
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Salary guides (e.g. Robert Half) publish annual IT salaries, not a fully-loaded
hourly rate. The $125–$175/hr range is a derived blend (base pay + overhead + vendor markup) — set from
your own loaded internal-IT and Flexis vendor support rates
Data reconciliation & audit cost ($)
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No reliable benchmark available — varies significantly by data volume and system
complexity
Total estimated cost per incident
Total cost per incident
$110K
800 shipments blocked · 4.0 hrs downtime
Operational costs
$42K
labour, spot & detention
Customer penalties
$65K
chargebacks & goodwill
IT rework
$3K
support & reconciliation
Cost per blocked shipment
$138
per move affected
Cost breakdown
Manual replanning labour
$1K
Spot / expedite freight premium
$40K
Detention & dock idle costs
$1K
SLA chargebacks
$60K
Customer goodwill / relationship
$5K
IT & vendor support labour
$1K
Data reconciliation & audit
$2K
Total cost per incident
$110K
Annualised downtime exposure
12 incidents × $110K per incident
$1.3M
Key insight: Your largest single cost driver is sla chargebacks,
representing 54% of per-incident cost ($60K).
At 12 incidents per year, your annualised exposure is $1.3M.
Reducing average downtime by just 1 hour per incident would save approximately $7K annually
in operational costs alone.
Benchmark from an independent research source —
click to view
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with your operational data
Freight baseline
Annual freight spend ($ millions)
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Replace with actual DHL freight spend across your 3 DC sites
Shipments per year
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Replace with actual annual outbound shipment volume across your 3 DC sites
Suboptimality assumptions
Freight cost inefficiency (%)
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The widely-cited "~8% freight savings from a TMS" figure traces to an ARC Advisory
Group survey, but the primary source is not openly accessible (and the number is sometimes attributed to
Forrester, with ranges of 5–10%). Treat as an unverified anchor — set the leakage % from your own
freight benchmarking
Spot market premium rate (%)
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The spot-vs-contract gap is volatile and published per-mile by DAT (recently near
parity); derive your own % from your lane rates rather than a fixed benchmark
% shipments forced to spot
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Well-configured TMS keeps spot exposure low, but the exact share is
operation-specific — set from your historical spot vs contract mix
ATRI (independent 501c3 research institute), 2023: drivers detained in ~39% of stops,
but <50% of detention fees are actually invoiced/paid — ~12% formal charges is conservative
SLA chargeback rate per late shipment ($)
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Published ranges ($50–$500/event; Walmart OTIF ~3% of item value) come from
vendor/3PL blogs — set from your actual customer routing guides and penalty clauses
% shipments incurring chargebacks
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~2% is a commonly modeled figure in vendor compliance content but lacks an
independent named study — set from your own historical chargeback rate
Estimated annual leakage
Total annual leakage
$2.7M
5.4% of freight spend
Cost per shipment
$54
avoidable waste / move
3-year exposure
$8.0M
compounding if unaddressed
Freight efficiency gap
3.0%
of contracted spend wasted
Cost breakdown
Freight inefficiency (poor consolidation / mode)
$1.5M
Spot market premium (misplanned loads)
$450K
Detention & accessorial fees
$480K
SLA chargebacks & compliance penalties
$250K
Total annual leakage
$2.7M
Key insight: Your largest cost driver is freight inefficiency (poor consolidation /
mode) at $1.5M annually.
A Flexis optimization initiative recovering even half of total leakage would yield $1.3M/year
—
enough to fund significant technology or operational investment with strong payback.