Manufacturing

A major trucking firm with 40 shipping centers nationwide and over 1200 employees had made major investments in technology to stay ahead of their competition, including a satellite network and sophisticated computer systems linking their offices and warehouses. The company has also invested in barcode shipment tracking, which allows them to determine the current location and status of customers' shipments anywhere in their system. The company made these investments in technology to provide the best possible customer service, giving their customers quick access to information they need now. They also knew these investments gave them a productivity advantage over their competitors, allowing them to be a lower-cost carrier in a very competitive industry.

Complementing their commitment to state-of-the-art technology, the company installed an OptiDoc imaging System from Advanced Technology Services to give their customers instantaneous access to delivery information.

One of the continuing customer needs is to find out when a shipment was delivered, where it was delivered, and who signed for it. While their IBM AS400™ systems track deliveries, their customer service personnel were continually searching paper or microfilm files to find the signed delivery receipt for their shippers. With the OptiDoc Imaging System, customer service representatives can now enter the Bill of Lading number and see the signed delivery receipts on their screens. The customer service agents can instantly answer their customers' questions about delivery, and can generate a printout to mail to the customer. They can also FAX the delivery receipt directly from their computer screen to the customer without handling the paper or even leaving their desk. This allows the company to resolve questions in a single phone call without having to take a number, do the research and call the customer back.

An added challenge -- Implementing High-Performance Imaging While Restructuring MIS

The company was replacing their IBM 4381 with IBM AS400s and an IBM RS6000 as they migrated to a more distributed environment. They wanted to move toward a client-server based computer system to give their users the information they needed for customer service. Any new systems they installed should use the client-server platform, but they had over 75,000 documents to scan, store and move across the network on a weekly basis in the first phase of imaging implementation. They needed a high-performance system that could handle millions of documents on line, with lots of room for growth as they added other applications. OptiDoc was the ideal, scaleable solution!

The company has developed two additional applications for their OptiDoc Imaging system: the first involves printing reduced copies of delivery receipts onto their customer billing, and the second is an automatic FAX out system of customer delivery receipts. OptiDoc's total compatibility with current and legacy systems quickly and easily enabled these custom applications.