Transport is the perfect imaging application. It operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It uses tons of paper. The industry has many people in different places who need to access the documents. Imaging saves time and money.
The transport industry has embraced imaging. It saves time. It improves productivity. It enhances customer service. And most importantly, it saves money.
Here's how the transport industry uses imaging to improve efficiency
1. Manifests, Bills of Lading and Proof of Delivery. There's a lot of paper associated with transport. Manifests and proof of delivery documents are vital. They prove the items got to where they were sent. Without these documents customers may refuse to pay their bills.
2. Drawings. Goods are packed into railcars, ships and airplanes as tightly as possible. Fast access to this information lets customers know how many of their boxes can fit into a container. They make the best use of the available space. Transport customers can also fill remaindered space with goods at the last minute.
3. Training and Safety Manuals. Railways and trucking companies have manuals for just about everything. Making them available in electronic form ensures everybody who needs them can access them. The documentation for a 747 jumbo jet weighs more than the entire plane. Finding a spec sheet can be time consuming and difficult - especially if it's offsite. Imaging makes everything available instantly.
4. Personnel Information. Resumes, driving records, salary information, bonuses, etc. can all be stored in a single electronic file.
5.Equipment. Keeping track of everything you own and maintenance records is much easier with imaging. See instantly when a truck was serviced and when the next major overhaul is due. Reduce repair costs.
One reason the transport industry loves imaging is because it saves money. When a customer calls in with a request for information the clerk calls it up instantly on a computer screen. No more searching through boxes of paper or microfilm.
6.Improved Cashflow. If a customer claims they haven't received their bill, you can fax it out instantly while you're still on the phone with them. If they claim a delivery wasn't made, fax out the signed delivery form. Your staff save time and you save money because you don't have to pay to return telephone calls.
7. Reduced Storage Costs. Some transport companies have rooms or buildings filled with paper. Imaging lets you use this space for more productive purposes. Trash your paper or move it offsite and reduce your rent.
Freight Forwarder Flies High With Imaging
Seko Worldwide is a $100 million freight forwarder based in Chicago. While they compete against FedEx, UPS and Emery Worldwide, they don't have any planes. They buy and resell airspace on other companies' planes.
They differentiate themselves from other companies by using the latest technology. One example is TRANSFLO, a document management system from Pegasus Imaging (Tampa, FL 813-875-7575).
"We use this software to scan all the bills of lading, proof of deliveries, invoices, etc," says John Fugazy, Seko's assistant VP of MIS. "We use a Bell & Howell (Arlington Heights, IL 847-675-7600) scanner on a standard Pentium PC. The entire system is NT-based. Everything on the system is instantly accessible to everyone. Even our local and remote users with non-intelligent workstations can access documents. They simply ask for images to be faxed to them.
"Before we installed TRANSFLO we had a typical microfilm process. Retrieving documents was time consuming and tedious. Customers often had to wait hours or days for information. It was expensive for us and them.
"Because we scan all the documents centrally, it sometimes takes a few days to get everything into the system. We have developed a remote imaging system that lets terminals scan documents. This speeds things up because they can be transmitted to us over the Internet. When it's fully up and running, we'll get documents a few minutes after a remote site gets them.
"Our next step with TRANSFLO is to give customers direct access to documents over the Internet. Our customers will be able to trace their freight through Seko's home page and pull up proof of delivery at the same time."
Fugazy said choosing the right system was difficult. They initially looked at six systems and narrowed the choice down to two. "Both products could do the job. Both cost about $250,000.
"We chose Pegasus because they specialized in transportation," said Fugazy. "Pegasus also had the strongest customer references. Their customers raved about the system and the personal service they received."
Imaging Delivers Packages Faster in Canada
Greyhound Courier Express Service is using imaging to manage more than 26 million images on its network. Imaging is saving the company time and money and helping them improve customer service.
Greyhound provides a truly comprehensive delivery service in Canada. As well as running a bus service, Canadians rely on the company to deliver packages to more than 3,700 locations in that country.
The company has 600 agents and 400 coaches and trucks on the road 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Because every one of the packages is important to the person sending it, Greyhound is keeping track of this information with DOCU.MAX's (Calgary, Canada 403-571-0180) LIBERTY 4.0.
When a customer lodges a package with an agent, they're given a receipt called a busbill. The busbill shows the package's weight, the shipping cost, the date, the transit company and the destination.
When a package is received, the busbill is entered directly into the AS/400 system by the agent. This is instantly retrievable by anyone on the network. The paper documents are then sent to the head office. Anything not already on the AS/400 system is entered by clerks.
All of the documents are then sorted, flattened, stacked and separated by type or template. The scanning and indexing is contracted out to West Canadian Industries. Documents are sent to this company every day for scanning and indexing. The paper is returned to Greyhound the following day for storage.
Since almost all of the images are barcoded, indexing is virtually automatic. Documents without barcodes are manually indexed over the next two to three days. After indexing the images are mastered onto a CD. West Canadian Industries creates two CDs every day with 24,000-27,000 images on each disc. These are sent to Greyhound's head office and copied into the company's RAID system. The indexing information is merged into the database.
Five weeks of data is stored on the RAID system. The oldest data is deleted and the CD containing this information is loaded into a Pioneer (Long Beach, CA 213-746-6337) 5004X Jukebox with 500 CDs. Slightly more than a year's information is stored in the jukebox.
Because information is rarely needed after this, the discs are filed. They can be individually loaded into a CD-ROM drive in a PC connected to the main imaging server when needed. Fourteen workstations are connected to the server with Novell.
The entire system, including the all hardware, the Liberty 4.0 software and Ixos' (San Mateo, CA 410-561-4442) Jukeman 2.1 jukebox management software cost about $600,000. Greyhound has not yet worked out how large their cost savings are because the system was installed to improve customer service, not save money.
