eCargo

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.

At eCargo our philosophy is to make the freight management process as simple as possible. We do this by hiding much of the complexity of moving freight, and providing an easy to use system to manage freight movements and costs.

A key component of simplyfying freight management is visibility, not only visibility of freight movements, but also visibility of freight costs. 

As a freight purchaser, can you comfortably say you have full visibility over freight costs, actual and accrued, at any point in time?

If the answer is no, then you are not alone. After years of providing freight management solutions we understand that many businesses have limited visibility over their freight costs. They usually rely on rough accruals and the receipt of invoices from freight suppliers after the fact.

Transportation costs are now a large component of manufacturer's expenses. These costs are regularly affected by changes in fuel and compliance costs, as well as base rate changes, changes in freight provider and changes to the manufacturer's distribution model.

Without a good understanding of current freight costs a business will find it difficult to forecast future costs, and understand the impact of changes to their supply chain.

Full visibility over freight costs requires an understanding of the following key components:

• What has moved
• What it cost to move
• What has been invoiced

Having the knowledge of all three elements in an online tool such as eCargo becomes very powerful. You will have more control and visibility over one of your business' single largest expenses . Whether it be for road, rail or sea eCargo lets you manage your freight costs in a single system, providing instant analysis of current transportation costs.

Carter Holt Harvey, via its logistics solutions arm Lodestar, have selected logistics company NZL Group Limited as the preferred freight manager for domestic road freight activities.

CHH is one of New Zealand's largest road freight accounts, and the appointment has come following an extensive evaluation of the market.

Read full article here.

So what impact does the Budget 2009 have on the transport industry? We thought we'd help you answer this question by pulling together a summary of all the transport related changes we could find in the budget.

New roads

With around 70% of all freight in New Zealand going by road, new spending on the country's state highways is keenly sought after by the industry. Funding for highways needs to increase as good transport infrastructure is essential to growth.

The Finance Minister's Executive Summary of the Budget states that the new Government Policy Statement on Transport signals an increased investment in the state highway network of about $1 billion over the next three years. Total spending will be $10.7 billion over the next decade.

The additional funding over three years will come from three sources:

• $420m reallocation from non-state highway classes (including savings on administration costs).
• $258m in new Crown investment (paying for the NZ Transport Agency’s share of Wellington Passenger rail infrastructure).
• $283m increases in fuel taxes (commencing 1 October and replacing regional fuel taxes).

Rail

In addition to $258 million of new rail funding, the Government has agreed to make a debt facility available to KiwiRail. This includes $115 million to fund its purchase of 20 new locomotives and to provide it with access to working capital.

Biodiesel boost

Energy and Resources Minister Gerry Brownlee announced that a new grants programme for biodiesel production will kick-start the biodiesel industry in New Zealand.

As part of Budget 2009, $36 million will be allocated to the programme over three years.  The grants will be available to domestic biodiesel producers selling their product to New Zealand consumers for a range of end uses.

Shipping

One glaring omission from the Budget 2009 is the lack of support for the maritime industry. The abandonment of the SeaChange strategy to build up New Zealand shipping in favour of building more roads could be a mistake. We need better state highways but an efficient nationwide freight network cannot be based on one or two key modes of transport. All modes need to be used as effectively as possible to compete against and compliment each other.

Electronic buyer created invoicing enables buyers to gain greater control over their accounts payable processes; saving on invoice processing costs, eliminating overpayments and providing real time access to invoices and cost accruals.

Using eCargo to generate buyer created invoices for freight and logistics costs buyers can achieve the following benefits:

• No manual data entry: Buyer created invoices are created instantly, generating the invoice in PDF format and integrating with buyer and supplier finance systems. There is no need for manual keying of data.

• Single point invoice access: Both buyers and suppliers can search for and view current and archived invoice documentation and status.

• Real time cost accruals: All non-invoiced freight and logistics costs are available for real time accrual reports, providing finance teams with accurate end of month information. A measurable reduction in accruals is also achieved through more regular invoicing.

• Streamlined dispute process: Users can log a dispute against an invoice line online, requesting a credit or POD. An integrated credit and re-issue process then follows, providing single standard and visible process, replacing lengthy email and telephone conversations.

• Reduced processing costs: Forrester Research reports that by automating their accounts payable processes companies can save up to 75% of their per invoice processing costs.

• Eliminating overpayments and invoice errors: Not all businesses have the resources to reconcile supplier invoices line by line, particularly with complicated freight cost rate tables. eCargo gives the buyer control and ownership over their freight data and rate tables, and the necessary tools to attain 100% certainly in the calculation of their freight costs.

eCargo’s customers recognise the benefits electronic invoicing provides:

“The reality of reverse billing has hugely reduced effort required by the finance team, freight costs are more accurate and the freight supplier relationship has strengthened markedly. Costs are largely accepted as there’s nothing to question and invoice negotiation is a thing of the past”, says Peter Levett, Sanitarium’s NZ Distribution Manager.

Woodproducts’ Assistant Accountant, Tania Teddy, explains “eCargo now does the hard work of checking invoices for us. Where processing weekly invoices from a single supplier used to take around a day and half effort, we’re now completing that in an hour and we trust the results”.

See our earlier post on eCargo's new Buyer Created Invoicing Dashboard, with screenshots.

Please contact us to discuss how we can assist with your electronic invoicing requirements.

There are obviously a lot of negative events going on in the global economy at the moment that will affect manufacturers and transport providers. As consumers spend less, the downstream effects can be large and wide ranging.

Businesses will be more focused than usual on cutting costs and optimising their operations as best they can. This is where supply chain tools will really shine, as they can provide the visibility and control that a business needs to better manage its supply chain costs and activities.

Transportation Management software such as eCargo can help in the leaner times as well as the good:

• Automate the reconciliation of your freight invoices from service providers. By doing so, you'll not only reduce the effort spent on this manually intensive task, but also highlight overcharges and inefficiently rated deliveries. For example, you may have a better full load rate to a certain destination, however when analysing actual movements, you find you're paying the individual pallet rate. Identifying this inefficiency and resolving it through better co-ordination between customer services and dispatch will save you dollars.
• Measure the impact of your supply chain savings initiatives. By comparing year on year freight costs against volumes, you can accurately measure what, if any, impact your supply chain initiatives has on actual freight costs. By comparing freight costs and volumes from the previous and current year, you take away any variations in seasonal movements.
• Use the actual freight costs for the year to better budget for next year's freight costs. eCargo can even help you with modelling predicted freight costs and changes to freight rates.
• Review your freight rates and structures to make sure they still fit your current distribution model. If not - renegotiate freight rates with your service provider to take advantage of better optimisation tools, such as Cube-IQ.
• Make sure your dispatch teams are working as effectively as they can in their execution of freight movements. This may mean centralising dispatch activities by utilising eCargo's ability to manage sites remotely, or providing Customer Services visibility over real time freight movements. This reduces the amount of time dispatch staff spend chasing up customer queries.
• Reduce your capital expenditure through the use of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offerings like eCargo. If credit remains tight, many businesses will look to cut their capital expenditure, which makes eCargo's pay-as-you-go SaaS model highly appealing; this is especially helpful, as it delivers operational cost savings at the same time.

Having more control and visibility over your freight movements and costs will ultimately deliver benefits through costs savings and better utilisation of your existing resources.

Manufacturers and logistics providers around the world have spent millions of dollars investing in ERP systems and other supporting software solutions to help them improve performance of their supply chain. This approach has streamlined processes and centralised information storage and management, yet for the volume of data they create, these systems remain very inward-facing and siloed in their approach to sharing data with other systems and suppliers.

The transportation of goods is a key component of an organisation's supply chain, but one that is predominately executed manually, and 'outside' of an organisation's system.

A Distribution Manager and his staff need to see what is going on: who is doing what, what is most critical and what decisions they need to make. They need a transport management system that delivers 3 key capabilities:

• Visibility across all their freight service providers: from inbound raw materials and stock transfers between sites, to the delivery of finished goods.
• Communication between supply chain partners: automating the communication of freight requirements to service providers and the resulting freight costs.
• Measurement of transportation performance: across any number of keys areas such as supplier responsiveness, freight costs, vehicle utilisation and dispatch performance.

With lack of visibility being the number one barrier to creating a high-performance supply chain, these capabilities combine to deliver a transportation execution system that will contribute towards an organisation achieving their supply chain goals.

eCargo provides these key capabilities through an integrated online freight execution system. Communication and Execution are key components to the eCargo solution, with measurement being delivered through Dashboards, Reporting & Reconciliation.

Please contact us for a demonstration of how eCargo can help you achieve a high-performance supply chain.