Digital Documents
The Internet is having dramatic, although less conspicuous effect in the back office.
JOHN BENDEL
TECHNOLOGY EDITOR
We've seen the impressive customer-oriented web sites of UPS, Fedex and other major carriers that provide a visible impact of Internet technology on trucking. But the Internet is having an equally dramatic effect on less conspicuous back-office functions, particularly in the rapidly expanding realm of document imaging.
Document imaging involves converting paper documents to digital files that can be cheaply stored and quickly retrieved over the web. Documents can be viewed, printed or forwarded from almost anywhere in the world with an Internet connection, a PC and browser software — often in less time than it takes to walk across a room to a filing cabinet.
A Vast Virtual Filing Cabinet
For example, the Internet plays a crucial role for some customers of PaperWise, Inc. (www.paperwise.com) of Springfield, Mo. According to company president Dan Langhofer, PaperWise stores customers' digitized documents on its own servers, retrieves them on demand and transmits images quickly back to the customer over the web. For customers like LTL carrier Central Freight Lines, Inc., of Waco, Texas, that can mean 75,000 to 100,000 pages a day, according to Langhofer. For smaller fleets the numbers are much lower.
PaperWise offers various electronic paths to its servers, but "the web is preferred because everyone already has that pipe in place," he said.
The web has obvious benefits. "When it snows and you can't get to work, you can get to the Internet from home. Your documents are available through a secured connection. Another scenario is LTL carriers with multiple terminals. Using the web they can share documents with all terminals with no infrastructure costs at all."
Similarly, documents can also be made available to fleet customers or any other relevant party over the Internet.
PaperWise offers a number of options for bringing documents into their giant digital filing cabinet. Customers like Central Freight transmit freshly scanned documents to the PaperWise servers over the web. Truckload carriers might chose other options. Langhofer said PaperWise interfaces with document scanning services such as TripPak and with truckstop kiosks like those at Flying J locations.
"We can intercept the data from any of those sources. In that scenario, your operation doesn't need a scanner at all," he said.
Then there are PC desktop options for storing business documents other than bills of lading and proofs of delivery.
"We have full Windows integration that allows you to send files by right-clicking a mouse on your desktop. You can pick up an Excel spreadsheet or the Word document you're typing and quickly store it in our repository," said Langhofer.
For example, a user can right click on a letter or any other document, and select the PaperWise "send to" option. They can then enter the name of the writer, the name of the document and a revision number. The system automatically dates and time-stamps the document then places it in the appropriate drawer of the customer's virtual filing cabinet. The customer can pull that document up, revise it and place it back in electronic storage at any time.
Low-Cost Scans From Many Places
Pegasus Transtech offers a wide array of document management options, including warehousing document images on remote servers for retrieval over the Internet, one of which is a low-cost, low-tech way to bring documents from far-flung, unsophisticated office locations — like those of some trucking agents.
The system called eScan involves sending low-cost scanners to the agents of larger trucking clients. An agent simply plugs the scanner into his/her PC and it's ready to work. Pregasus President Leslie Berlin explained that the software to operate the scanner and bring the resulting images onto the Pegasus server is on a web site.
The agent plugs in the scanner, opens a web browser and goes to the designated web page. There he clicks on the appropriate selections and the software, in effect, reaches through the computer, activating the scanner and bringing the resulting image home to the customer's virtual file warehouse. That document is then available for further processing.
"It lets anybody really start scanning immediately," said Berlin. "We've been using it for six, eight months. One of our customers is Quality Carriers. They've got 110 agents using it. And we're just rolling it out for a company that has about 1,000 agents now."
In the case of Quality Carriers, Berlin said, the scanned images from agents go to Quality Carrier offices, not to a Pegasus server.
"We go with a very inexpensive scanner, but it supports grayscale so it gives us a much cleaner, crisper image. We're dealing with bills of lading that can be pink and green, yellow and blue, so quality is critical," Berlin explained.
Documents, The Web And The Future
Leslie Berlin sees an increasing role for the web in document management technology.
"I'll tell you where the next really cool step is. It's making your customers part of your workflow application though a browser," she said.
Instead of sending a raft of bills to a customer on paper or even by email, Berlin looks to a time when digital bills with supporting document images can made available, say, to shippers over a web browser from the carrier's server.
"Why not give them the ability to look at all the invoices out there and all the supporting documents. And if they have any comments like, oh this was rated wrong or whatever, they could put comments on it, hit a button, it goes right back to the biller. It's all together, it's interactive," she said.
"Now they can chose to pay bills and process them as they need to without having to have a whole stack on their desk or a whole bunch in their emails.
"Also, now if you're the fleet, they're part of the workflow. You can look out there and you can see what they're working on. You can see what they've paid and what they haven't paid. It just improves that communication.
"That's where I see the Internet and document management going, shortening the whole time frame," Berlin said. "It also tightens the relationship between the fleet and the customer."
Related Article
Real Time Demos On The Web
