Software
Creating a Unique Software Solution to Manage Your Day-to-Day Operations
Meeting your company’s specific software needs is key to providing your company with the tools to manage and grow your business.
Ron Davey
There are many different vendors providing software solutions in the marketplace today. Finding a vendor who has the capability of tailoring an application to a company’s specific needs and being able to meet their needs as they grow larger is crucial. Software is a large investment and a number of factors should be taken into consideration before purchasing.
Experience, Experience, Experience
When researching a vendor, determine the length of time they have been in business, their experience and knowledge of your industry and their flexibility in being able to meet your specific challenges and requirements.
Customize Your Setup
Being able to configure a system your way, so that you do not have to change the way you do business is extremely beneficial. A few key examples include:
The ability to change the wording available in an application to match your company’s language and terminology. This will assist staff in the transition to a new product.
Customization of the various types of charge codes you have available will enable your company to have choices in how your customers are charged.
Customization of service type codes will provide the opportunity to allow for different revenue streams
Provision of different Bill Frequencies will enable you to bill certain groups of customers without affecting others
The ability to create and customize forms within an application will streamline the process that you may have to do now in a separate application and negate the need to spend money on expensive pre-printed forms and labels. Take this one step further and a system that gives you an opportunity to automatically print forms when you service a customer is one less thing you need to remember in your busy day.
A fully customizable G/L Interface will enable you to interface to any accounting package, set up account numbers, print sales journals and provide automatic journal entries to book into your accounting package.
Customized Customer Information
Having all of the information about your customer available on one screen enables your customer service staff to provide prompt, efficient responses when phone calls are received. Having the ability to tailor your customer information screen will provide a logical flow to how your company conducts business. Some examples include:
The ability to customize additional fields to capably handle different scenarios that may arise or information you may encounter.
The ability to set your own credit limits and warnings to give dispatch a warning who owes you money before you service again
Creating specific notes for drivers to print on specific forms
Vertical Markets
Some companies have more than one vertical market they service. Finding a vendor who can handle the challenges of different vertical markets they may service in one application, will save considerable time and effort. A system that is flexible enough to have the ability to have more than one company sharing a database for resources such as vehicles/drivers, etc. with options for financials is very beneficial to this type of a company.
Are You Making Money and from Where?
Surprisingly, many companies are not able to answer this question. Software that can provide comprehensive production reporting will automatically give you the edge by showing you where you are making money and more importantly, where you are not making money. One key example is the ability to drill down to detailed profitability at a route level. This will assist management to keep their finger on the pulse of the business and provide comparisons between routes.
Custom Reporting
An application should also provide for the capability of providing custom reports. A third-party report writer that is available with a software product will enable you to achieve custom reporting to exactly match your needs. Another option that is helpful is the ability to export reports.
What Efficiencies Should You be Able to Achieve in Routing Your Vehicles?
Your overall goal in routing your vehicles should be to get your routes completed in the most efficient way possible. It is a true saying that a picture is worth a thousand words … being able to visualize your route by means of a fully-integrated mapping feature should provide you with many choices and enable you to immediately see affects of changes you may make on a map.
Flexibility to Provide Paperless Solutions
The ability for an application to provide an integration to a third party such as GPS or hand-held devices, will give you additional functionality such as uploading route sheets to either a Garmin unit or a hand-held device.
Your Vehicle Types, Assets, Materials
Having the flexibility to set up specific types of vehicles or assets you wish to track, specific types of materials, whether it is recyclables or disposables is of paramount importance to provide a customized solution for your business.
Choosing a System that Will Grow with You
An important factor when looking for software is to ensure that the system you choose will not “outgrow” your company. Request and check customer references to ensure that the system you choose is capable of servicing larger companies to handle future growth. The online demo process is another important factor in determining if software meets your needs and will enable you to determine how flexible the system is.
Meeting Your Needs
Finding a software solution that is designed to allow you to match how you are presently doing business and does not attempt to change the way you are operating has many benefits. Meeting your company’s specific needs is key to providing your company with the tools to manage and grow your business.
Ron Davey is President of RouteOptix Management Systems Inc. (Kitchener, ON). He has been developing vehicle routing and mapping software applications for 30 years. In 1980, Ron worked in the solid waste industry for many years and co-wrote the software for a large solid waste organization. In 1990, Ron was hired as a consultant and wrote software for a solid waste technology company. In 1998, Ron recognized the need for software to service other vertical markets with similar challenges to the solid waste and recycling industries and designed his own vehicle routing and mapping application that was released in Nashville in 2000. The creation of Ron’s company, RouteOptix Inc., coincided with this release. RouteOptix now serves the solid, liquid and medical waste, recycling, grease, oil recovery and document destruction industries. Ron can be reached at (866) 926-7849, e-mail [email protected] or visit www.routeoptix.com.