How Content Management Streamlines The Transportation Industry

By Author: Dave Ruschel
Total Articles: 5
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All of these enterprise content management (ECM) functions are crucial for transportation companies to stay competitive, whether a trucking company, logistics provider, material handler, moving company, freight forwarder, airline, or package delivery service.

The transportation industry is increasingly streamlining both operations and back-office processes with document scanning, document capture, document management, and workflow automation. All of these enterprise content management (ECM) functions are crucial for transportation companies to stay competitive, whether a trucking company, logistics provider, material handler, moving company, freight forwarder, airline, or package delivery service.

Streamlining Operations

Transportation companies are awash in paper documentation that is crucial for efficient operations, yet is inefficient to begin with, such as delivery tickets, bills of lading, pick tickets, schedules, driver logs, receipts, licenses, purchase requests, MSDS, bills of lading, correspondence, and customs documentation.

Streamlining the Back-Office
The following transportation ...
... back-office function experience the greatest benefits from content management:

Human resources, including everything in the employee file: job applications, performance reviews, copies of driver's licenses, photographs, tax forms, benefits enrollment
Accounts payable: invoices, bills, checks, correspondence
Accounts receivable: sales invoices, purchase requests, purchase orders
Contract management: contracts, legal forms, notes
New accounts: signature forms, copies of checks, agreements

Overall Transportation Content Management Benefits

Instant accessibility to all transportation and back-office documentation
Visibility into transportation workflows for troubleshooting and to remove bottlenecks
Improved fleet management and maintenance
Simplified scheduling
Enhanced customer service
Compliance, e.g. providing driver documentation

Enterprise content management (ECM) solutions help transportation companies of all types manage content better and accelerate business processes, while reducing costs associated with operations, customer service and industry compliance.

One of the most powerful forms of content management today is cloud document management (cloud DM). Cloud DM allows organizations take advantage of what only the largest companies with the deepest pockets have been using for years. Cloud DM is a monthly expense versus a capital expenditure and often cost a fraction of what document management software costs the average company.

Vulcan Materials Case Study

Vulcan Materials Company is one of the world's largest producers of construction aggregates. In 2004, they shipped more than 243 million tons of crushed stone, gravel, and sand, but their proof of delivery (POD) ticketing system was costing them thousands of dollars in labor, paper filing and storage costs each year.

Key Benefits

498% ROI and full project payback within three months
Reduces time to locate tickets from 10 minutes to less than 30 seconds
Saves more than $15,000 previously lost to delivery disputes
Saves $128,000 annually in labor and offsite storage
Provides customers secure, unlimited access to their own records
More than 70 internal users were trained in just a couple hours

The Situation

Vulcan Materials Company was founded in 1916 and today generates revenues of $2.5 billion from approximately 8,400 employees. They are one of the top five producers of construction aggregates in the United States, with over 317 production facilities in 21 states and Mexico. Vulcan Materials was named to Fortune magazine's list of Most Admired Companies for eight out of the past 11 years. Truck, rail and water distribution locations shipped more than 151 million tons of product in 2009.

At the Midwest distribution headquarters, materials shipments generated more than 200,000 paper POD tickets each month. These tickets were shipped semi-weekly from 30 locations to headquarters to be sorted and filed by hand in a 200 square-foot storage space. Vulcan Materials kept records for seven months onsite, and then re-boxed and shipped them to an offsite storage vendor. With a monthly shipment of about 15 boxes and a retention period of three years, their records storage costs were averaging $21,600 per year.

Locating a given ticket within this complicated process was often difficult and time consuming. Each customer service representative fielded 20 to 25 calls per day. For each call, it took approximately 10 minutes to locate the requested ticket and pull it from storage. Vulcan Materials had one full-time employee entirely devoted to locating requested data.

Vulcan wanted to reduce the amount of time it took to field their customer requests and cut the overall costs related to storing and managing information.

The Solution

Vulcan Materials implemented a cloud-based document management solution (cloud DM). The initial selection of cloud DM was made due to the lower cost and extremely rapid deployment and training offered. Cloud DM provides users access to their data over the internet, allowing companies to reap the benefits of ECM without the upfront capital outlay required to purchase hardware and install it in-house. More than 70 users were trained—each taking only minutes—and Vulcan Materials started retrieving data from the system right away.

To process the 200,000 tickets generated per month, Vulcan Materials utilized document scanning services and capture technology to scan and index the tickets on production document scanners and then upload them to the cloud DM system. To date, Vulcan Materials has almost 2.6 million POD tickets stored and indexed for rapid retrieval in the system.

"With a return like this, we are better able to focus our time and energy on serving our customers and meeting corporate goals. Cloud DM has made us a better company."

– David J. Muno, Credit and Collections Manager

Recognized Benefits

The implementation of electronic ticket management at Vulcan Materials has saved the company time and money. With cloud DM, customer service representatives have reduced the time it takes to locate tickets from 10 minutes to less than 30 seconds. They are no longer searching paper records or calling for retrieval of files from their offsite vendor. Now, representatives pull up data immediately without ever leaving their desks. They have become so much more efficient that the company has released one full-time employee, saving more than $40,000 annually.

They have eliminated the need to write-off receivables due to an inability to locate POD tickets that verified shipment delivery. Due to improper handling and misfiled documents, accounting had previously been forced to write-off almost $15,000 of revenue each year. "Although this wasn't happening frequently, we were concerned about the amount of money we were losing each year. With cloud DM, all the delivery information is catalogued and retrievable almost from the moment the shipment leaves our yard," said David J. Muno, Credit and Collections Manager.

An independent analyst firm verified a certified ROI study that revealed the cloud DM project offered additional savings, providing a 498% ROI and full project payback within three months of implementation.

Customers now look up their own tickets in the cloud DM system, resulting in fewer disputes. The sales team loves the technology and uses it as a differentiator to establish new accounts. One Vulcan Materials customer commented, "The cloud DM system allows our office staff to pull in delivery tickets from last week and match them against the Vulcan invoices we receive, which speeds up our processing. The system works great!"
Resource: http://www.datamationis.com/software/document-management