Case Study
Autonomous carrier orchestration cuts new-carrier onboarding time by 97% for a leading ASEAN apparel retailer
The Locus agentic TMS runs the retailer's last-mile delivery as one multi-carrier parcel management (MCPMS) layer: selecting the carrier, generating the label, creating the shipment, and tracking each parcel to delivery, with every status synced back to the retailer's systems.
Segment & Geography
- Industry: Retail. Global apparel and fashion.
- Region: ASEAN, with the customer's network spanning worldwide.
Objectives
- Open a new market or add peak capacity without waiting on carrier onboarding.
- Run carrier selection, labelling, and shipment creation as one autonomous flow, with delivery status centralized in one view.
- Show customers an accurate delivery promise, and reduce the where-is-my-order (WISMO) and returns queries that follow when it is missing.
What Locus Runs
- Automated carrier allocation and switching across every last-mile carrier, on rules the retailer sets.
- Label generation and shipment creation at packing.
- Every carrier's status harmonised into a single standard set and synced with the retailer's systems.
- Accurate delivery dates computed for the customer at checkout.
- Every delivery and return tracked to its promise on the retailer's website.
- Route optimization and dispatch for the retailer's owned last-mile fleet, through the Locus mobile app.
Impact
new-carrier activation
drop in WISMO and returns queries
delivery SLA
carrier label generation
Client Overview
A leading ASEAN apparel retailer runs a large store network alongside a global e-commerce business. Across its markets, last-mile delivery runs almost entirely through carriers, each with its own systems, rates, and service areas.
Entering a new market, the retailer would outsource warehouse operations to a third-party logistics partner running its own warehouse software and carrier links. As each market matured, the retailer moved to its own warehouse management system (WMS). It needed one transportation layer that could go live alongside that system, market after market, without rebuilding carrier integrations each time.
The retailer implemented Locus agentic TMS to run multi-carrier parcel management as one governed layer, live in each market as the retailer's own warehouse system rolls out. Locus is the world's first agentic TMS, automating delivery and logistics decisions since 2015.
Business Challenges
Onboarding a carrier took over three months. Each new carrier was a full engineering project: custom integration, status mapping, and labels. Over three months of build stood between signing a carrier and shipping through it. With only a handful of carriers wired in per market, delivery cost was locked. A new market had to wait out the build before the business could serve it.
No single source of truth for where shipments were. Each carrier reported delivery events using its own proprietary status codes, and nothing reconciled them into a single view. Operations tracked shipments carrier by carrier, and the retailer's own systems never saw a clean, common status.
Customers never saw a delivery date they could trust. Without a date computed across the carrier mix, the online storefront could show only a rough lead time. Shoppers got a vague window, and when it slipped, they turned to support, driving a steady flood of WISMO queries. It drove hundreds of thousands of delivery and returns complaints in a single half-year.
A consistent, brand-grade delivery experience was impossible to enforce. Across dozens of carriers and many markets, the retailer had no way to hold every delivery to one standard. The experience a customer received depended on which carrier handled the parcel and in which market.
Getting Live, Market by Market
Locus partnered with the retailer’s team to ensure that each market goes live the same way.
Learn the market first. Every market runs differently: its own carriers, its own serviceability rules, and its own hard rules about which carrier handles cash-on-delivery or click-and-collect. Locus and the retailer's team map how that market actually operates before configuring anything.
Stand it up alongside the warehouse rollout. As the retailer moves each market onto its own WMS, Locus goes live beside it, so the transportation layer arrives with the system it serves.
Tune with the operators. The team running the market sets the policies and works them through with Locus until the rules behave the way the business expects. Ownership stays with them as the market grows.
What goes live stays live. Carrier connections re-validate continuously, so a carrier changing a field or a policy does not surface as a broken shipment weeks later.
Each market builds on the last. Carrier integrations and rule patterns from earlier markets carry forward. A new market starts from a working base and goes live on the retailer's own schedule.
How It Works
The Locus agentic TMS runs as the multi-carrier parcel management layer across the retailer's last mile. The retailer's OMS and WMS stay the system of record; Locus runs as the system of execution, carrying every order from allocation through to delivered status.
New carriers go live in days, with no engineering project behind them. When the business opens a market or wants to try a better-performing carrier, that becomes a decision the team makes, with the revenue behind it still there to capture. From there, the Carrier Agent allocates every shipment automatically, filtering on serviceability and the retailer's hard rules, such as cash-on-delivery routed to the carrier equipped for it. It then selects on the mix the retailer sets: cost, speed, performance, or a weighted blend. Locus generates the label in the retailer's global format and creates the shipment at packing.
One source of truth across every carrier. Every carrier's status is harmonised into one standard set, however many updates a carrier sends, and synced back to the retailer's OMS and WMS. The operations team gets control tower visibility across every last-mile shipment, and every downstream system reads the same status.
An accurate delivery date at checkout. A network-aware delivery date is computed across the carrier mix, so the website shows a date the operation can hold. For the retailer's own last-mile fleet, Locus sends each driver a sequenced route through the mobile app, holding them to the promised window.
A consistent delivery experience in every market. Every shipment and every return is tracked to its promise on the retailer's website, with real-time alerts the moment an SLA slips. Customers in every market see the same experience through to delivery, so fewer ask where their order is.
Every autonomous decision stays governed by six mechanisms: explainability, traceability, evaluation, autonomy levels, execution sandbox, and human-in-the-loop override.
The Results
People
Manual carrier work moved into the platform, and the teams now set the policies and govern what the agents do.
- Carrier onboarding no longer sits with the retailer's engineering team. Adding a carrier is a decision the business makes, and it goes live without a development cycle.
- Support answers from one tracking view instead of chasing status across carrier portals, acting on the real exceptions that proactive alerts surface.
- Each market's carriers and rules persist as configured policy, so they hold as the network grows and teams change.
Resource
One platform now orchestrates carrier operations across every market.
- Any carrier the business needs goes live in days, with 1,000+ carriers already pre-integrated.
- 99%+ of parcels arrive within SLA.
- Within 300m: address validation pins every delivery point precisely, so drivers reach the right door.
- Tens of millions of parcels tracked through Locus each year.
- Live across multiple ASEAN markets, each onboarded alongside the retailer's own warehouse system.
Cost
Cost to serve fell as carrier flexibility opened up.
- The retailer can run a carrier for a month and drop it if it underperforms. Carrier mix became something the team tunes, and delivery cost came down with it.
- Locus weighs live rates in every allocation, so each order ships on a cost-aware carrier choice that still meets the SLA.
- 40%+ fewer WISMO and returns queries, cutting the cost of every avoidable support contact.
Impactful Enterprise Stories: 360+ and Expanding
$1M+ in savings for a North American retailer's multimodal, ocean-to-store network
3X ROI for a global FMCG leader across 10 countries
$14M+ unused capacity uncovered for a Fortune 50 parcel leader in North America
75% growth in clinician visit capacity for a leading US home care provider
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