Why businesses should adopt new technologies and ditch manual processes.

It’s still common that businesses use manual and time-consuming processes as a force of habit. If you have never been exposed to the benefits of technology, then how would you know any different?

Whether it’s keeping track of your jobs in spreadsheets, managing driver availability on Outlook, or communicating with your staff via Whatsapp, you’re wasting time duplicating tasks; keying in your job data: adding locations, pricing each job, printing out documentation. This process, for every job you win.

But this is just the first part.  What about your job allocation process? Some companies set up Whatsapp groups to send jobs to their drivers, but this can often be chaotic and difficult to manage.

Within the last 7 months Mandata have discussed with multiple haulier companies to help to solve these problems and streamline their process with a transport management system. Mandata has highlighted five interesting cases below.

 

“Life had become too difficult. Too many manual processes were wasting time throughout the day. Lost PODs and a disjointed order-to-invoice process were just some of the issues we needed to fix.”

Capturing PODs using pen and paper and hoping they return to the office all together and legible is a common issue when needing to close your sales cycle. It’s easy to misplace paperwork or mistakes to be made, however the impact on your cashflow can be catastrophic. Incomplete or missing PODs can result in you not getting paid for the jobs.

“Our manual systems were slowing business processes down. PODs were having to be scanned and this wasn’t an efficient use of our time. Also invoicing was taking far too long.”

Thanks to the power of technology, businesses can speed up their orders to cash-cycle. Reducing manual processes and time required to do what should be simple tasks like invoicing to make managing your operation easier by utilising an efficient transport management system, so you can save time and invest that back into your business.

“We’re spending multiple days a week managing the invoicing and revenue allocation processes. There are too many manual tasks to close off jobs”

Invoicing your complete jobs can take hours, if not days to complete if you are doing this manually. Scanning in paperwork, attaching the POD to the invoice, and then emailing individual invoices out, or printing and sending them by post!

Using a transport management system can turn days of invoicing, into minutes, with a few clicks of a button. Electronic proof of delivery can be viewed by the back-office staff in real-time, meaning once all jobs are marked as complete, batch invoices can easily be produced and be sent out automatically by the TMS. Simplifying your admin. Getting invoices out quicker to get paid quicker.

These are the most common problems faced by hauliers and the reason why they have just recently switched to a transport management solution.

If businesses are currently experiencing pains within them and want to cut back on time spent on admin, simplify job allocation and enhance communication between your office and drivers, all whilst increasing your profitability, then it’s recommended to look into possible technology solutions that can help your business.