As with any provider of software we receive a large number of requests from our customers for new features and system improvements. We try very hard to implement many of these requests, and tend to focus on the ones that provide benefits to all our customers.

There are challenges in providing customised solutions to a customer when everyone uses the same software, such as keeping the user interface clean and simple without cluttering the screen with a plethora of options.

In the interests of keeping an open dialogue with our customer base I thought it would be useful to share a little bit about what we are working on for the coming year. This is certainly not a roadmap, and we'll still keep a few little surprises to ourselves, however this will give you an idea of the core areas we are planning to deliver on this year.

We can summarise our key areas as follows:

• Enabling you to better manage the exceptions that occur in freight movements
• Streamlining the process of managing your freight rates
• Administration of your master data

Exception management

I dream of a world where a consignment always has the correct volume and address, the carrier always delivers in full on time and there are never any invoicing errors. This of course is a pipe dream, systems such as eCargo most definitely reduce errors through system integration (reducing manual data entry) and process automation (reconciliation of freight invoices) however the process will always start with someone keying data into a system.

Your freight management system needs to provide you with the means to identify, manage and correct the exceptions that will always occur. We'll be delivering a number of improvements in this area to help you better manage these exceptions while still leaving an audit trail of actions and changes.

Some examples are changing a consignment's details after it has been confirmed as delivered, the ability to void an invoice or being able to delete an invoice line prior to its approval.

Freight rates management

Maintaining freight rates can be a considerably complex task. Rating models can have such things as multiple tiers, carriers, minimums and maximums, full loads, management fees and different product types, add onto this fuel surcharges and you have room for a lot of error when making changes to these rates.

The current process of maintaining your rates in eCargo via a master spreadsheet and bulk upload can become problematic when making many small changes. We mistakenly believed rates were changed once or twice a year, how wrong were we !

In light of this we'll be bringing to you more features to make small and large changes to your rates directly in eCargo, whether it be deleting a single freight rate, or updating the entire rate table with a CPI change.

Master data administration

We are really taking a push approach this year when it comes to developing new features for managing master data. It's your data to manage, therefore we aim to give you the means to better manage data relating to your users, customers, carriers, products and rates.

Of course all of these new features would be pointless if we couldn't provide a system that was available when you needed it, and ran as fast as required. So we'll also be delivering a number of performance and reliability improvements through upgrades to our servers.