Grocery stores now take half the time to record purchases, people can do banking from the convenience of their homes, warehouses have quadrupled in size as stored goods are captured in systems and easily retrieved and cars are manufactured at an astonishing pace – our personal lives are busier than ever and technology has adapted to ensure that we can see to our needs on the go.

Logistics Automation

Apart from our daily lives, automation has also made great strides in the logistics industry. Previously, data accuracy was a large hindrance to accurate business decisions. Now, software solutions, such as document management, warehouse systems and transport systems, automatically capture and feed data into organisations’ operating systems. This information is then displayed via user-friendly dashboards and can notify clients of any hindrances to efficiency, any inaccuracies and any areas where improvement for streamlined operations and cost reductions can be achieved.

Today, automation is a crucial link to ensuring successful warehouse management as it highlights inefficiencies in supply chains. WMS systems integrate with other software solutions, thereby enabling companies to integrate admin and operational solutions with their WMS system, providing a 360 degree view of business operations.

This results in both time and cost savings and allows companies to make decisions quicker as all information is available at the decision makers disposal.

The courier industry has also benefited from automation and can track and trace parcels to ensure they reach the right destination at the right time. Integrating track and trace software with transport software further allows these companies to ensure that they are choosing optimal routes and delivering packages in the most time and fuel efficient manner.

Read More About Complexity and IT Automation

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It goes without saying that the IT supplier should be stable and have a proven track record, with knowledge and understanding of the freight and transport industry.  The product on offer should have a solid and industry recognised database that will grow with your needs and be adaptable to your operating environment.  It must therefore be customisable to suit your needs and not the other way around.  Possibly, most important of all – it must be proven!

Click Here to Read About the key issues that the ‘heart’ of your operation should be able to handle as standard

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Sapics is an annual conference hosted at Sun City where professionals with a passion for supply chain management meet to discuss topics and explore resources relevant to the supply chain profession and benefit from valuable networking opportunities.

“Sapics has become an important part of our yearly initiatives for industry participation and networking,” states Dovetail Business Development Director, Shermandra Singh.

Read More

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Consumers also want to feel that they derive value from your business, no matter what you sell you need to be leaving an insight on the table every time a consumer walks out of your door. If you are selling wedding dresses you need to make sure that you are also selling a bride a feeling of absolute perfection on her special day.

If you own a vehicle repair shop, you need to, not only, fix cars and hand them back, but also,  educate your customers regarding car maintenance, affordability and safety. It is no longer good enough to just sell a product or service, you need to sell value along with it.

Why are Consumers so Demanding?

Why do consumers want more for less? Because they know that they can get it. Consumers can compare prices across a range of stores, research products and services on the internet and view your service record by Googling your name and seeing whether there are any complaints or good reviews regarding your company.

Social Media has taken the world by storm and has given consumers the power to make their voices heard, praise companies that serve their needs and speak up when they receive bad service.

The power of social media is far reaching and it has never been more important to ensure that reputation management forms part or your business management strategy.

Aligning Social Media with Business Management

While it is imperative for every company to have a website, the importance of social media for customer engagement cannot be stressed enough. Many companies were built on Facebook as it allows entrepreneurs to get in touch with people who need their product or service, inform them daily of what they offer, make them excited about people who have used their products by actually showing them photos and then engaging with them.

Social Media makes companies more human – it allows consumers to interact with the faceless names of big and small companies and actually get a response and feel valued.

Ensure that social media forms part of your business management strategy and align all of your operations to ensure a positive image for your company and an unforgettable experience for your clients.

 You might also be interested in:

Logistics Software and Billing Management- Dovetail Goes Global

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KPIs can assist an organisation ensure that each employee is contributing towards achieving the organisation’s overall goal. KPIs also helps managers to ensure that their specific departmental activities are supporting other departments well enough to ensure growth and success.

A successful business management strategy needs to comprise KPI goals to ensure all employees and departments are working towards achieving the same outcomes.

Employee performance needs to be constantly monitored and adjusted to ensure that the overall goal of an organisation is achieved, that working tasks are sustainable and goals achievable, and that time is managed efficiently.

Once a KPI strategy has been implemented in an organisation, the success of the strategy will rely on the degree of implementation. All team members need clearly defined goals and deadlines.

How to implement a KPI strategy
1. Ensure that the KPIs you set are supporting corporate strategy.
2. To determine what your KPIs should be, determine what makes your business successful.
3. Ensure that the KPI measurable is defined.
4. Define how often the measurable will be measured.
5. Ensure that KPIs are in line with IT strategies.
6. Ensure that the KPIs set, allow for growth and expansion.
7. Define what you are trying to achieve.
8. Make your KPI strategy accessible to all staff – to ensure reinforcement.

In ensuring that all goals set out in your KPI strategy are achievable, a skills matrix can be used to measure team competency, skills, knowledge, interests and the years of experience held by each team member. A skills matrix will assist an organisation gain an overall view of the skills hosted and will therefore enable the implementation of realistic goals by aligning them to operational-specific outcomes.

Furthermore, a skills matrix helps companies identify skills shortages and gaps and highlights the need for knowledge sharing and development between team members. Should a person leave the company, any skills gaps will immediately be visible to the managers. A skills matrix will also reflect which staff have skills that need to be transferred to other staff members – thereby ensuring continuity when particular staff leave the company.

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In the supply-chain execution, the operational execution and management is realised outside the boundaries of the business and into the commercial world. Drivers are equipped with mobile devices to complete collection and delivery tasks and to provide instant status updates on the allocated tasks. The back office staff are up-to-date with the status of the driver’s schedule, without needing to contact the driver. This obviously reduces costs and improves efficiencies. Thus real-time updates could easily be extended to other stakeholders in the supply chain, with minimal or no costs.

In the supply-chain management, account managers may be equipped with tablets or phablets. When visiting customers, they will have accurate and up-to-date information on the status of the account. They will be able to record the discussion with the customer as it happens. The account manager need not, if the process is executed well, come into the office as frequently – thereby allowing the account manager to spend more time in front of the customer.

Inside Mobile Apps reports that:

• There are 7.3-billion mobile devices on earth, but only 7-billion people.
• In 2011, 57% of IT pros regarded non-sanctioned devices and applications unfavourably.
• In 2012, 60% of surveyed firms allowed consumer devices and applications to be used.
• From June 2011 to June 2012, the percentage of staff with smartphones used at work increased from 37% to 60%.
• By 2017, 45% of mobile cloud services are expected to be software as a service (Saas) based (software hosted in the cloud by independent software vendors).
• 71% of IT executives see the increase in device and app use affecting IT spending in future.
• 47% expect to increase budgets to pay for mobile services.
• 34% will hire third-party developers for mobile apps.

This article is an extract from: The Book on Logistics Software. To learn more about the book Click Here. 

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Dovetail Business Solutions implemented its eDocs transport management system at Bidvest Panalpinas’ (BPL’s) facilities In Durban, Johannesburg and Cape Town. The project started in December 2012 and was completed on time in September 2013.

The main aim of this project was to implement a fully functional transport management system with an upgrade to Dovetail’s eDocs solution.

Reason for eDocs Implementation

The reason for implementation was to enable BPL to handle transport seamlessly, manage subcontractors’ costs, report on internal SLA’s and share customer-related documents. The project also enabled the Integration of debit notes and invoices to Sage Accpac Version 6.1.

In addition, with BPL’s strong focus on reducing its carbon footprint, the company chose to implement the eDOcs solution to assist with paper-use reduction, thereby, increasing its contribution to environment-friendliness.

Solution

eDocs allows for safe, proficient and cost-effective imaging and distribution of business documents, thereby ensuring process consistency.

The eDocs system archives and distributes standard business documents, general documents and scanned images in the most efficient and cost effective way, ultimately offering more than just document imaging.

Standard documents, such as the waybill, can be imaged and this module also allows for all corresponding documents to be scanned and retrieved. The images can be accessed via the eBusiness module or emailed to the customer.

Training

Dovetail provided full FreightWare system and maintenance training and demonstrated the processes of resolving operational or financial queries to BPL.

Training after project implementation depends on the client as well as the company’s staff turn around.

Dovetail always provides training and support in the initial project implementation and can also provide any additional training and support required thereafter- which is usually required if the client has a staff turnaround and does not have the capacity to do the training themselves.

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The Client

Triton SCS was created primarily to increase the range of services offered through the Triton Express group. Triton Express is one of the leading transport and warehousing providers across Southern Africa and offers integrated supply chain solutions that enable complete visibility over its clients’ business processes. Triton SCS offer the Triton group the opportunity to provide end-to-end solutions to their customers.

The Need

Triton SCS approached Dovetail Business Solutions for a document management system to cater for the business needs of its largest client Sparepro- an importer and wholesale distributor of motor spares and related products.

The reason for Triton SCS’s urgent requirement for a document management system owed to a required increase in communication, admin and operational efficiency. Therefore, Dovetail provided Triton with a document management system to adequately manage, capture and distribute important documentation to Sparepro, as well as provide its client with quick responses regarding document requirements, such as POD’s.

The Solution

Dovetail’s eDocs solution was implemented in July 2013 at Triton SCS to ensure optimised document management processes. Due to the stability, reliability and simplicity of the implementation of the eDocs solution, it was fully implemented at Triton SCS in approximately one and a half weeks.

The eDocs system archives and distributes standard business documents, general documents and scanned images in the most efficient and cost effective way, ultimately offering more than just document imaging.

Standard documents, such as the waybill, payslips, staff and legal documentation, can be imaged and this module also allows for all corresponding documents to be scanned and retrieved. The images can be accessed via the eBusiness module or can be emailed to the customer.

The Results

Owing to the implementation of eDocs, Triton SCS is now able to provide its clients with instant responses on document requests at the push of a button, which has increased client satisfaction and improved service delivery for Triton SCS.

Further, administration costs have also been reduced and, owing to the integrated archiving functionality in the eDocs solution, Triton’s documents never go missing and the company can access its documentation from anywhere, anyplace, anytime.

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Does that sound right? Probably not because paper is more integrated into our daily lives than we realise. Wherever we go we see paper, whatever we do we need paper and going paperless in your office does not mean removing all posters from the walls, no longer sticking sticky notes on your computer screen or replacing all paper cups with real cups.

Nope, going paperless is more about efficiency and accuracy than it is about having an office with no paper in it.

Paperless = Document Management

Having thousands of files lying around your office will greatly reduce your staff’s efficiency and productivity levels- no matter how good you are at labeling. The great thing about the information era is that information is readily available with the click of a button. You no longer have the excuse to not know something about the business you are in as Google has all the answers.

And as customer demands are on the increase and instant gratification is now a trend you don’t have time to sift through thousands of files before answering your customers. Instead, you should have all of your business information available at the click of a button. When a customer calls, you need to be able to pull up their information in front of you and answer any question they might have so they can put down the phone feeling satisfied and impressed.

With record archiving and document management software you can have all of your information online  anytime and have 24/7 access from anywhere. Even better, you can enable a client portal which will ensure that your clients have access to their information as well, thereby making billing management and service level agreements simpler, faster and better!

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We get this question all the time: “Is document management not too big of an investment for my small business? Will it not cost me more than I make? The answer to both these questions is no.

Document management forms part of Logistics software which means that it assists you with increased visibility, reduced costs, integration and optimisation. Even better, it grows with your business. Therefore, the cost of document management is proportional to the size of your business. This means that no matter how small or big your business, document management software can handle it and will show you a return on investment.

Enabling cost savings for both big and small businesses

Paying for Document Management Software with Document Management Software

What does that mean? Quite simply that the cost of document management will most likely be covered by the savings you achieve with document management. Thereafter you will actually start seeing a return on investment and cost reductions. This makes document management a must for any business, not only because it integrates your operations and administration processes, but also assists you with delivering better quality customer service, enabling  record archiving in the cloud, and optimised administration management. Coupling all of these benefits with billing management will help you make sure that your business is making and not costing you money.

Where does billing/cost management come in?

It actually can be coupled with document management to give you your own personal secretary and financial manager in the cloud. What could be better than that? Cost management software will help you with ensuring that invoices and financial documents are automatically sent out, captured and that all of your information is integrated and displayed via dashboards. It will also give you control to see which of your clients received their invoices, who opened it, who paid, who still needs to pay and will also give your clients the power to control their financial obligations to you and ensure that you are fulfilling your obligations to them.

So… what could be better than document management and billing management?

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