How Productiv builds the software a 3PL always needed — and saves $100K doing it

TL;DR

• Over $100K in annual savings. Productiv stopped paying for software that almost fit and started building exactly what they needed.
• First app became a new product line. Built ProDocks to solve a $36K internal problem, then launched it externally and had dozens of customers within the first 90 days.
• Workflows that once took hours now take minutes. Productiv built software their industry never had, speeding up processes like product inspections from one hour to two minutes.

Productiv Inc. is a third-party logistics (3PL) company that’s been helping companies across America get their products from warehouses to store shelves for over 20 years. With 1,200 employees across twelve locations nationwide, their logistics needs are vast, complex, and high-stakes. From meeting store compliance standards to handling retail packaging to fulfilling ecommerce orders, they needed software that could help them work more efficiently.

In the niche 3PL industry, finding fit-for-purpose software is nearly impossible. The Productiv team was forced to piece together manual processes and spreadsheets for workflows that had no available software, paying full-price for off-the-shelf tools when they only needed a fraction of the functionality. When a friend introduced CFO Paul Baker to Lovable, he saw it immediately: nobody understands what 3PL software needs to do better than the people doing 3PL.

Within months, Paul and Director of Warehouse Operations, Raj Vangala, built sorely needed applications and replaced or avoided tens of thousands of dollars in software contracts.

ProDocks: the first app saved $36K

In logistics, shippers need to book dock space at warehouses using a legacy tool (think: Calendly for docking bays). The available tool for this was going to cost Productiv $36K annually, but Productiv really only needed a tenth of the functionality. This is where Paul and Raj turned their attention first. In 10 days, they built ProDocks, which eliminated that $36K expense entirely. Because it was built to their exact dock scheduling and operational tracking process, adoption at the warehouses was fast.

ProDocks solved Productiv's problem so well, they started selling it. Within two months, it had its first paying customers. “We just wanted to build a solution for our own company, but it turns out other companies have the same issue. So ProDocks is turning into its own revenue stream as well,” said Paul.

When no software exists, Productiv builds it

The team at Productiv had so much success with ProDocks that they’ve launched other major applications, building completely new software where no options had ever existed before. Their next build, ProPallets, handles retail compliance for stores like Walmart, Target, and Best Buy. For 3PL companies, compliance is high-stakes. Get a shipment wrong and you're looking at thousands of dollars in fees. Using Lovable, the team automated their compliance workflow end-to-end — replacing manual, paper-based processes with barcode scanning and reducing the number of people needed to run that process from 16 to 4.

Another workflow Productiv transformed is product inspection. What previously took about an hour per inspection — moving photos from camera to computer, assembling PowerPoints, emailing, and confirming details — now happens in about two minutes through ProQuality, a phone app connected to their Warehouse Management System (WMS) that lets teams scan, photograph, and send to clients to receive approval in one flow.

They've even used Lovable to build temporary solutions — when a middleware outage threatened a critical go-live deadline, they built their own bridge in hours to keep the project moving. They're not dependent on any single vendor. If something breaks, they can fix it.

And the builds kept coming; Paul and Raj realized they needed a single place to house them all. ProVantage gives all 1,200+ Productiv employees one interface for every application they've built, from dock scheduling to staffing schedules. And of course, it's built with Lovable.

The operations leader building production-ready prototypes

Productiv has taken a unique approach to building with Lovable. Raj, the Director of Warehouse Operations, builds the first version of everything. He’s an industrial engineer with no coding experience, but he deeply understands the field of logistics and warehouse processes. He’s also closer to users than a traditional software engineer would be, so he’s able to get direct feedback and implement it quickly. What previously took months of back-and-forth with developers, Raj now handles in hours.

He doesn't work alone. Two seasoned developers take Raj's prototypes and finish them into production-ready applications, handling optimization, security, and API connections. Every app they build connects directly to Productiv's existing systems via APIs. It's a model that scales — Lovable at the center, with the right people around it to take builds from idea to production.

Building and iterating on their purpose-built software is so easy that Raj and his team don’t shy away from feedback. They welcome it. “I love finding out what’s hard for users, then I can say, ‘hold on a sec.’ One plane flight later, we fixed it with Lovable.”

A better bottom line and employee experience

Paul and Raj are pleased with the savings they’ve achieved, but they’re even more proud of what they hear from the people using the tools every day. “One of our regional managers from Charlotte called our CEO directly and said, ‘Did you see this tool that Raj built? It made our life so much easier and it’s so much faster for us to use it.’” That’s the measure that matters most to them.

The pair is still careful not to ship too much too fast, however. In a field that can be hesitant to change, they recognize that these new builds are asking a lot of their employees. It’s part of why the ability to iterate on user feedback has been so critical. When a user needs adjustments, Raj and his team can make the edits in minutes.

What started as a fix for a $36K line item has become the foundation of how Productiv runs its entire business. Dock scheduling, retail compliance, quality inspections, returns management, order processing, personalization routing — they've built tools for all of it. An operating system for 3PL that’s tailor-made for Productiv.