Company Overview:

NW Shippers, Inc. is a regional pick and delivery carrier with about 10 trucks and two dispatchers. It is a family-run business started over 30 years ago as a flooring industry shipping co-op, and then changed to a carrier when trucking deregulated in the early 90's. NW's primary focus is the building and packaging industries, but occasionally provides third party carrier services for brokers.

Business Challenge:

A completely manual billing process that hadn't changed much since its inception 30 yrs ago.

The Critical Issues:

• Order/Dispatch records were not correlated with Bills of Lading
• Critical data was hand written multiple times throughout the billing process
• All billing records were paper based and created a tracking and filing challenge
• High rate of errors and billing adjustments due to redundancy in the process
• Commonly lost paperwork and never billed a customer

Required Capabilities:

NW Shippers, Inc needed to eliminate redundant data entry, correlate order and dispatch records with Bills of Lading to ensure all orders were billed appropriately, and file data electronically to eliminate the challenge of tracking several sets of paper documents.

Tailwind Solutions:

• Provided a single point of data entry
• Created a consolidated view of order and dispatch information throughout their entire process
• Simplified the matching of Bills of Lading to orders
• Ensured that all orders were invoiced, with a significant reduction in costly adjustments
• Supplied time savings in paper filing and tracking by storing data in an electronic database

Results:

NW Shippers, Inc. eliminated missed invoicing due to lost Bills of Lading. They eliminated redundant and manual data entry, therefore greatly reducing the number of invoice adjustments. They saved time by shifting the majority of their filing to electronic, and have seen a reduction in required storage space and filing labor. Management has better visibility than they ever have into profitability and performance, by customer and by route, which has been critical to the success and health of their business.