The thumbnail is a blue card with the Logical Developments logo which is a diamond with the letters L and D inside of it. The letters are offset from each other vertically while also overlapping horizontally. The each sit inside of their own rectangle. In the centre is the title, "Document Tracking in the Transport Industry".

Document Tracking in the Transport Industry

Paul Mulroney - Jun 18, 2021

The transport and logistics industry relies heavily on paper documents to run their business. Without computerisation, document management can get quickly out of hand. A consistent filing scheme and an integrated computer system is the best way to increase the efficiency and productivity of any transport business.

Trucks on a busy highway

Image by Schwoaze from Pixabay


The transport and logistics industry is a paper-heavy business; typically if a customer wants to ship something from “A” to “B”, they would fill in a consignment note with the details of their shipment, typically from a carboned Consignment Notebook with a unique number on each page. The customer keeps a copy, and the rest is passed to the office. The consignment note is then usually entered into a computer system for costing and processing into truck manifests. The manifest is the list of consignments that are included in a particular truck or trailer being transported. If there are dangerous goods (DG) on board, then additional copies of the manifest with the DG particulars are required to travel with the consignments in the trailer. At the delivery point, a copy of the consignment note is presented to the recipient for signing as Proof Of Delivery (POD). The POD is sent back to the office, the consignment is invoiced and the customer receives a statement. That’s a lot of paper!

 


Courtesy of the Kaldor Public Art Projects Archive


With computer systems these days, it’s possible to file scanned copies of all the documents, but without a consistent filing scheme, a document can easily get lost on a storage space somewhere!

If you’ve ever seen inside a transport organisation, the operations area could easily be buried under stacks of consignment notes in various stages of the transport process. If those carefully maintained stacks are ever disrupted, it can cause significant delays in delivery and payment.

The Problem
Paper-based systems are not easily scalable without a lot of discipline. Once an organisation gets to a certain size, it’s not possible to easily locate a particular consignment document. Paper is unreliable – typically a customer fills in the consignment note, and handwriting is often hard to decipher. Is that 60, or 6.0? If we’re talking weight, it’s the difference between a full and an empty truck! Paper is not searchable – how do you locate a document quickly if there is a query?

Stacks of Paper

Image by Ag Ku from Pixabay

The Solution
Paper is unavoidable – the customer, sender and receiver all need to see some paperwork as evidence of the consignment being transported and delivered safely. However, once a consignment has been received, it can be scanned into the computer and optical character recognition (OCR) can be used to then extract the consignment number as a unique identifier. Once scanned, the transport/logistics software can then file that document against the computerised version of the document. When staff lookup the consignment on the computer, the paper copy can be retrieved at the same time.


The Benefits
Compliance & Safety
The transport/logistics software will have business rules built into the system that makes it easy for the staff to follow all transport industry safety rules. Dangerous goods? The system automatically prints two copies of the manifest, along with the DG information necessary for the driver and authorities.

Auditing
Customer has a query? You can lookup the consignment in the software, see the data entry that the staff have made and compare that against the scanned copy to verify that the information was entered accurately. Proof of Delivery can be scanned and linked to the consignment, if there’s an issue with delivery, there is signed proof of what happened.

Improved Customer Service
Some larger customers want the proof of delivery included with the invoice for the service. If you have a small number of customers, this is easy to do with a paper-based filing system. What if the customer wants it emailed? You would need to scan it anyway. The transport/logistics software can combine invoices and associated consignments together to include in an email to the customer.

Workflow
The goal of most businesses is to deal with a piece of information once – the more times a consignment document is touched, the more opportunity for something to go wrong. Scan the document into the system, then it can travel along with the rest of the workflow automatically.

Clever transport/logistics software, a scanner with an Automatic Document Feeder (ADF), Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software is a must when your organisation reaches the point where a purely paper-based system is not practical. It can take some time to setup the system, but the benefits are that it will allow you to take your business to the next level.

While going digital might sound like a hassle, but if you need a hand, give us a call and we can help! Our ConNote package is suitable for every stage of the transport chain. From pickup to delivery, ConNote has you covered. To find out more call or email the office!