Winning at freight procurement isn’t just about having data — it’s about building a strategy around it. This independent benefit case study from Nucleus Research examines how Henkel, a global manufacturer operating three North American supply chains, expanded its use of DAT iQ to transform reactive contract management into a proactive, intelligence-driven sourcing strategy.
Before DAT, Henkel’s procurement team had no reliable external benchmark for carrier negotiations. Rate validation was inconsistent across business units, budgeting relied on historical spend rather than market direction, and the organization had limited ability to anticipate or hedge against volatility. After evaluating alternatives including SONAR, Uber Freight, Breakthrough, and TruckStop, Henkel expanded its investment in DAT iQ based on its data depth, credibility across the freight ecosystem, and fit with procurement workflows.
The results speak for themselves: approximately $1.5M in annual cost savings, driven by lane-level benchmarking that anchored negotiations in objective market data rather than carrier-provided assumptions. Henkel also used DAT’s forecasting and trend analytics to design a gain-share/pain-share contracting model with built-in mid-year rate and volume reviews — giving the team a structured way to adjust pricing as conditions shift rather than waiting until the next bid cycle.
The study also surfaces a key best practice for any shipper looking to maximize ROI from DAT: treat the platform as an active part of your procurement governance, not a static data source. Henkel’s recurring check-ins with DAT’s account team kept the organization ahead of market shifts and continuously refined their benchmarking inputs — turning a good analytics investment into a durable competitive advantage.
