How Petony Transportes grew revenue 20% and saved $230k by building its internal operating system on Hercules

Petony Transportes is a Brazilian freight company. It runs road freight across Brazil for clients like Ambev, Heineken, Kenvue, and SmartFit. Petony has ~$8 million in annual revenue, 45 employees, 70 drivers, and moves ~400 loads per month (3x that over Christmas). The founder, Pedro Amaral, started the company 20 years ago in Guarulhos in São Paulo. He has never written a line of code.

Pedro fully rebuilt and migrated his entire company's ERP and internal portal to an app he built on Hercules. His Hercules-built ERP runs quoting, dispatch, driver onboarding, finance, tax, and HR all from a single place. He has fully replaced spreadsheets and other SaaS software he had disliked for years but was never able to move off. Thanks to the changes, Petony has directly increased revenue by 20%, saved $230k on outsourced software development agencies, and saved hiring 6 new staff. He keeps growing the company without needing to add people to run it.

Our entire business used to be scattered across spreadsheets and other systems. I know zero about code but I built a Hercules app that pulled it all into one place. It has changed my business.

Growing revenue by 20% through smarter quoting and automatic driver sourcing

Before Hercules, Petony manually calculated quotes. One incorrect calculation could directly reduce revenue and profit. To generate each quote, Petony had to manually 1) open each supplier's pricing page, 2) calculate the final price and margins in a spreadsheet. Because the quoting process was so tedious, Petony wasn't able to calculate quotes for each inbound. Petony received hundreds of requests for quotes per day, many of them junk. He had to guess which opportunities were real and which were not. Finally, if Petony couldn't find a truck to take the load, Petony would outright lose the revenue.

Today, Petony's entire quoting and driver sourcing process is automated through the ERP he built on Hercules. First, Pedro's ERP connects to his supplier's pricing sites via API. This enables him to get instant and accurate supplier pricing data. Second, Pedro uses Hercules AI to read the incoming emails requesting a quote. The AI flags the ones worth pursuing and extracts the details the team needs. When a load has no truck, the AI automatically posts a job for drivers. If a driver accepts, Petony's Hercules app automatically performs security and compliance checks on the driver. By pricing more accurately and making sure they have drivers for overflow loads, Pedro believes his revenue has grown by at least 20%.

Before, we had to go to other sites to check pricing. Today those pricing sites are inside the system. I set the margin and send the quote. Our revenue has gone up ~20%.

Avoiding 6 hires by unifying operations into one ERP

Previously, Petony's operations were full of duplicated work and human error. Each load had to be manually input into 3 different software systems: quoting, dispatch, billing. Quotes had to be manually reconciled against orders, drivers, and invoices. A single error could cost the company thousands. Given Petony does ~400 loads a month (~1,200 in December), the tediousness of the work and the error rate was high. For years, Petony's operations team had begged Pedro to hire 6 more admin staff just to keep up.

Petony rebuilt its entire quote, billing, and dispatch operations into one unified ERP on Hercules. The ERP now tracks a load from quote to payment. Invoices are generated automatically, interstate taxes are generated automatically, and even the supplier payments are automated with AI. The standardized workflow means no duplication and no errors. Not only has the new ERP avoided 6 hires, but it has saved 100s of hours a month for his existing team. His team now spends more time on revenue generating activities: tracking deliveries, replying to clients, following up on quotes.

My operations team kept pushing me to hire more people. I put an end to that with our Hercules App. Now they spend far more time on work that helps me grow the business, not tedious admin work that doesn't matter.

Saving $230k on software development agencies and existing SaaS contracts

Petony had already lost $33k on 3rd party software development agencies whose platforms never ended up working. 3 years ago, Petony paid one agency $17k to build an invoice optimization app. The developers never finished it and he lost his money. One year ago Petony paid another software agency $15k to build the same app and it also failed. When he designed the system he needed, he was quoted $230k and 8 months. Scared of losing money yet again, Pedro decided it wasn't worth it. Instead, he had to rely on his off-the-shelf transport management software that frustratingly billed him every month for modules he never touched.

Pedro built his company's entire internal operating system himself on Hercules. His app is customized exactly to how Petony's business runs. He paid Hercules a fraction of the $230k he was quoted by software dev agencies, his app went live in 2 months not 8, and most importantly, his app actually works. He can also make changes immediately. A coworker can stop by his desk wanting something changed on their screen, and he makes it while they stand there. A software dev agency would have taken weeks to make unplanned changes. What's more he's saving money by migrating off existing SaaS vendors. His old transportation management system cost ~$1,500 a month. Petony has almost fully migrated off it, saving $18k a year.

With other developers, I spent money that I basically lost. It was never finished, never the way I wanted. With Hercules, I own the app. It's exactly how I want it. Whenever I have an idea, Hercules turns it into something much better than I had imagined.

Why Hercules

Pedro chose Hercules because it turns his ideas into working software without needing developers. He has saved $100s of thousands of dollars, has full control over his app, and doesn't have to manage any servers or other vendors. He even has full control over the branding. No other platform he tried was able to take him anywhere near as far as Hercules.

I went from being the owner of the company to being its developer. Now everyone comes to me to change something on their page.

What's next

First, Pedro plans to sell the Petony portal to other carriers. Every transport company needs a system like it, and none has one. Second, he plans to expand the platform. He is opening a warehouse in another state. He is building its management system in Hercules. He estimates it will save about $9,600 a year. Finally, he wants to start growing his consumer app, Condomove, an app for deliveries inside residential buildings. As Pedro puts it: "I have the ideas, I just never had a way to build them."