Every trucking company relies on many different documents for billing, driver payment and customer satisfaction. But documents also create a lot of manual work for your back-office personnel adding time and errors to your processes.
Founded in 1951, Ezzell Trucking focuses specifically on wood residuals: chips, bark, shavings, and wood pellets. They serve the forestry industry in the Carolinas and Virginia with 2,500 loads per week across almost 100 drivers.
That number of loads and drivers created a massive amount of paperwork for the company. This paperwork put them on a two-week cycle for paying their drivers because of the multiple manual processes involved. They were using the Eleos Technologies mobile driver application for document scanning on the road, but they knew that if they could take it a step further with data extraction from those documents all the way to integration with their Trimble management system TMW.Suite TMS they could cut that cycle time in at least half.
Even though they were already scanning documents in the field, they turned to Paperwise to reduce their data entry even further. Paperwise Intelligent Capture can extract data from documents like bills of lading and scale tickets with smart OCR technology. By extracting and assigning data for each document such as scale ticket number, time in, time out and net weight, employees back at Ezzell’s home office would save time and the data would be more accurate.
Without smart data extraction and integration, manual data entry is required to index documents and route them to the appropriate personnel. Someone must physically match the scanned images to the right client with the correct order and leg in TMW.Suite and then queue them up for review and invoicing. Other problems can arise with manual data entry because of typos and missing information. If there is any question about a load or document, it can be difficult to match later and drivers’ memories about hundreds of documents are not reliable weeks after the load.
The Paperwise Solution
- Document capture with Eleos Technologies – Since Ezzell was already using the Eleos Technologies mobile driver app, we wanted the Paperwise solution to have as little disruption to their drivers as possible. We took in the order/leg and supporting documents from Eleos Technologies. Eleos Technologies also provided the order number for each document.
- Data extraction – Paperwise Intelligent Capture then extracts data from scanned documents such as scale ticket number, shipper number, time in, time out and net weight. That allows us to classify those scanned documents by extracted information and use that data for TMW.Suite or back-office system integration.
- Central repository – After classifying the documents, we store the documents in a central repository for later reference, billing and history.
- Eliminate manual data entry – Previously, documents would need to be manually indexed. Thanks to Intelligent Capture, data from the scanned documents is automatically indexed using important TMW.Suite management system information such as Trailer number, date/time in, date/time out, ticket number, shipper number and net weight. Then captured data is automatically updated inside of TMW.Suite thanks to our tight integration.
- Route documents – Paperwise automatically marks documents ready for billing and creates a billing work queue for processing in the home office.
- Rendition billing – Paperwise then automatically collates all documents necessary for billing based on the data elements collected and indexed.
Real Results
Ezzell Trucking saw immediate benefits from Paperwise.
- Faster cycle times – Ezzell cut their billing and driver payment cycles in half with document indexing, TMW.Suite integration and more accurate information.
- Happier drivers – In addition to better pay cycles, drivers enjoyed not having to answer as many questions or provide indexing information for documents.
- Improved cash flow – It’s not uncommon for trucking companies to see hundreds of thousands of dollars of unbilled revenue due to issues with missing information and manual processes. With Paperwise, Ezzell reduced the amount of unbilled revenue which improved cash flow.
- Customer satisfaction – Ezzell’s customers also enjoyed more timely billing, greater accuracy and less missing paperwork in their invoice packets.
If you are involved with a trucking company that has no imaging or workflow solution in place and are tired of manual processes and errors, contact us today for a free consultation. We are certain you can achieve these same results quickly, easily and inexpensively.
