Automation has instilled a wave of relief for the back-office processes in the trucking industry. Large volumes of daily paperwork coupled with manual entry and processing can happen in just a few clicks. According to a study, 32% of transportation and logistics companies rely on manual steps in more than 50% of their daily processes.
Back-office logistics has to perform a series of tasks to provide support for efficient trucking operations, including:
- Gathering freight bill payment
- Scheduling and Tracking shipments
- Generating and collecting invoices
- Secure proofs of delivery
- Resolve payment disputes
- Capturing, researching, and closing out loads
- Correction and completion of transport orders
- Warehouse management
- Return of loading equipment
These labor-intensive tasks can be error-prone, time-consuming, and can add to the existing expenses incurred by the company. Automation provides companies with the necessary tools and expertise to streamline operations and generate efficiency.
According to another study, back-office accountants spend 25-30% of their time searching for necessary documents to resolve queries or resend documents to customers to ensure that the company has completed the payment process. Automation helps link invoices’ control and distribution to monthly statements, achieving a 10-35% improvement in their monthly cash collections.
Moreover, 25% of the time gets saved since employees no longer have to search for the documents, providing more efficiency to the back-end process. The back office must match purchase orders, goods receipts, and supplier invoices for successful order processing in trucking operations. Any deviation or mismatch amongst these datasets can lead to an error in the payment.
Automation now occurs onsite when a delivery is made, reducing the burden on back-office employees by scanning the signed proof of delivery (POD) and storing it on a drive. It helps business managers to access the status of orders and inventory levels in real-time. In addition, employees can directly access the database for customer queries.
Software bots are now handling the manual tasks related to order shipping, supporting companies in streamlining their operations. These bots efficiently take over the entire trucking process, from the initial pick-up request to reporting shipment status and final delivery. A robot can identify details from e-mails relating to pick-up requests and extract and organize such information in a well-defined manner.
This database gets tagged to current scheduling activities and is processed systematically. Robotic Process Automation (RPA) also extracts essential details such as the bill of lading and carrier invoice. RPA is being used in the trucking sector to automate the entire order-to-cash cycle, ensuring a consistent cash flow for the business. Back-end offices use RPA to carry out invoice automation to build error-free databases and smoothly manage the accounts payable process.
ARDEM provides fully managed logistics outsourcing services from issuing load statements to freight billing and auditing. With ARDEM, clients are guaranteed real-time processing, streamlined back-office support, intelligent automation boosting visibility and accuracy, and increased scalability. ARDEM provides automation solutions to its clients to resolve bottlenecks in trucking and logistics.
