One of the biggest recent changes in the area of document management is it’s really gone from imaging to content management. If you think about it, there’s a lot of new technology that people are using – from trailer tracking to mobile communications to accounting and dispatching systems that are Internet based, so the value in putting in a process management system is that it can be set up to monitor a carriers systems and condense that information into a scorecard or into an easy to view report. The value is that your knowledge workers aren’t spending 2 – 3 hours a day going to various systems to hunt this data down to determine action items.

The benefit is that if you have your staff managing 20% of the transaction pool, its obviously going to be much less work than having your staff manage 100% of the transaction pool. More importantly, it really gives you very quick visibility to service exceptions, so if I have immediate notification of a transaction that’s out of standard, there’s a good possibility that it can be fixed before the shipper knows about it. So really, the value of these systems is that it will lower back-office costs from a human resource perspective and you’ll have better customer service as well.

Historically yes, smaller to mid-size companies were prohibited from utilizing this type of solution because of the high acquisition costs. You had servers, you had services to deploy the system, and you also had ongoing maintenance of these applications from both a hardware and software perspective.

But when these types of systems began moving onto the Internet, it really gave the smaller companies an opportunity to outsource it to other organizations can maintain and manage these applications for them. It also virtually eliminates the large, upfront cash outlay to acquire the system and provides an opportunity to pay on a much lower monthly basis to maintain the system. Today, all you need is a desktop computer that connects to the Internet.

Typically these systems can be integrated into a company’s existing document managing systems – and integration into your existing accounting and dispatch systems is much easier because they’re typically open systems now, and through standard integration, connections can be made that leverage the data in the accounting, dispatch and mobile-com systems with the content that’s contained within the document management system.

This gives them the ability to bill more quickly by installing in-cab scanners or by using truck-stop document scanners, but more importantly those types of solutions allow drivers to be paid more quickly. One of the main ways to attract and keep drivers is to get them paid more quickly, so through document management and automating these manual processes, you’ll have less staff associated with those processes, as well as providing a paycheck more quickly to your drivers.

With smaller carriers, the justification for this type of system really lies in just running a better, more efficient organization. You know where the documents are, you know if there’s a document missing, or if there’s data that’s not coming through. As for reducing staff, it’s generally much harder to do at a smaller organization than at a larger one.

The ROI is based on the size of the organization. Obviously, the more people you have whose job function can be automated, the more robust the ROI will be. Some carriers have had ROIs in less than 6 months, but for smaller to mid-size carriers, really the ROI comes in terms of streamlined processes and identifying revenue leaks.

If you’re just starting to look at acquiring a system, I would recommend looking for a company that can provide you with a complete enterprise solution. You don’t want to be stuck doing billing and settlements more efficiently, but having safety and recruiting and other parts of your business not having a solution that will streamline processes and being able to manage by exception as well. So the key really is to look for solution providers that are enterprise in scope and that have the experience in the trucking industry so that you’re not their first customer and learning on your dime.