When assumptions and supplier-provided data are driving your freight budgets, you’re negotiating blind. This independent benefit case study from Nucleus Research examines how Colgate-Palmolive replaced fragmented, internally-driven freight visibility with objective, lane-level market intelligence from DAT — and what that shift meant for their bottom line.
Before DAT, Colgate’s procurement team had no reliable way to validate whether supplier-embedded freight costs actually reflected market conditions. Budgeting depended on historical performance, and without an external benchmark, internal disputes between logistics, procurement, and finance were hard to resolve.
By embedding DAT’s benchmarking and customer pick-up (CPU) discount data into their sourcing and negotiation workflows, Colgate gained the leverage to push back on inflated rates with credible data — securing up to 10% savings on long-term supplier agreements. DAT also surfaced inbound freight overcharges that had previously been absorbed as fixed costs, improving total landed cost across categories.
Today, DAT serves as Colgate’s authoritative reference point for transportation pricing across the organization, giving logistics, procurement, and finance a shared benchmark that accelerates planning cycles and reduces escalations.
