Analog Habits In A Digital Age
Mill Creek's Eric Ness looks forward to increased functionality over the Internet, but longstanding work habits must change first. Many dispatchers remain leery of digital automation.
"I've got some dispatchers who barely use the computer. I convinced them to use email and it was a big thing and that was only five years ago," Ness said.
Some dispatchers resist the idea of loads tendered electronically, for example.
"They would much prefer somebody fax them or email them the load and call and tell them when there's a change. They don't like it when the system automatically updates things. They want to talk to someone and say, hey, this load is going to deliver tomorrow instead of Friday. If the computer automatically updates that, it upsets them," Ness explained.
"Even if I set up a thing to notify them it's going to be changed, they still have the belief that it could be wrong and it could really screw up their schedule if the driver is misinformed.
"The best I can do with load tenders is have the customer enter them in and (the system) notifies the dispatcher that there's a load tender. They can print it out and they can have the option of importing it. That's the furthest I've been able to take them.
"At least they're not entering in all the information when somebody else has already done it on the other end," Ness said.
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