FREIGHT BILL INVOICE PROCESSING
THE CHALLENGE OF EFFICIENT LOGISTICS
Being a logistics service provider, whether a freight forwarder,
warehouse, LTL carrier, or other type of provider means gaining
and maintaining customers in a very competitive environment.
Your business tends to be high volume, low margin, so you live
or die on efficiency, price and service levels. To compete, you need
accurate, up to date ASN/order information so you can manage
your resources accordingly. Processing problems can mean empty
trucks, shipping delays, and loss of profit margin. Over time, these
issues cost you profitability and customers.
THE PROBLEM: ACCEPTING BOL ORDERS IN MULTIPLE FORMATS
After years of integrating EDI processes and networks in an
attempt to automate the BOL receipt and entry process, you still
receive hard copy orders via fax, email and/or mail. Whether these
hard copy BOLs represent 10% or 90% of your overall volume,
processing them is time consuming, expensive, and prone to errors
IN SEARCH OF THE PERFECT BOL
Unfortunately, for most companies, manual BOL processing
means errors, delays, and rework. Whether it’s a machine printed
or hand written BOL, entering hard copy orders come with
a variety of challenges. These include:
INCOMING ORDER CAPTURE
• Hard copy BOLs arrive in via multiple methods – fax, email,
and/or mail
• Transmission delays and paper handling errors slow down
and hold up BOL entry
• Inventory Control challenges tracking every BOL in hard copy form
BOL ORDER PROCESSING
• Manual data entry is slow and costly
• There are no standard formats (every BOL is different) – Adding
data entry staff is difficult, often requiring months of training
• Key entry errors cause shipping delays and in some cases
erroneous delivery points.
• Incorrect or incomplete BOL information prevents processing
EXCEPTION HANDLING
• Information on BOL does not match internal systems data
(e.g. Bill-to, Ship-to, Account information)
• Order processing rules typically reside in the minds of data entry
staff (or on yellow post-it note stuck on the sides do their
computer monitors)
• Correction of flawed and incomplete BOLs is time consuming
and labor intensive
• Processing delays can lead to changed, postponed,
and/or canceled orders
For most companies today, the bottom line is that receiving and
entering BOLs is a complicated mix of manual steps with relatively
little benefit from automation. This mix slows down shipments,
costs money, and creates errors.
Paper-to-EDI SOLVES THIS PROBLEM
Paper-to-EDI provides advanced, automated BOL entry and
management services that speed up order entry, increase
accuracy, and reduce your costs.
Paper-to-EDI BOL MANAGEMENT PROCESS
Paper-to-EDI’s BOL processing services utilize advanced
“free-form” OCR document/character recognition combined
with intelligent human verification to provide maximum efficiency
for hard copy (fax, email, and mail) BOL entry processing.
Our solution includes:
INCOMING BOL MANAGEMENT
Fax and e-mail orders are captured directly by Paper-to-EDI’s
systems and routed through a series of automated processing
steps. Our advanced inventory control capabilities track every
page of every BOL to ensure all documents are processed.
AUTOMATED BOL ENTRY
Utilizing advanced “free-form” optical character recognition and
document classification technologies, Paper-to-EDI is able to
directly capture most BOL data automatically. Our double-pass
human review steps, as well as relational data validation lookups
finish off the process ensuring highly accurate data.
EXCEPTION HANDLING
Those few orders that fail Paper-to-EDI’s validation edits are sent
to workflow queues on Paper-to-EDI’s web-based exception
servers. There, customer service specialists from your organization
can clear exceptions via a customized web interface.
PAPERLESS PROCESSING
Incoming BOLs are rapidly and efficiently processed
by Paper-to-EDI to create a complete data and image record.
Paper-to-EDI can upload EDI files directly into your Freight
Scheduling system(s), faster and more accurately than ever
before. Additionally, images of the original documents are indexed
and uploaded to image archive systems for long-term secure
storage and instant retrieval.
AUTOMATED BOL PROCESSING SERVICES CONVERSION OF FAX & EMAIL BOL ORDERS TO EDI B I L L O F L A D I N G
ADVANTAGES OF Paper-to-EDI’S BOL PROCESSING SERVICES
- Administrative Cost Reductions – 30% - 60% hard dollar savings
- Real-Time Order Processing – 20 - 30 minute turnaround
- Leveling of Peak Processing – Consistent turnarounds regardless
- of peaks
- Significant Reduction in Error Related Loses – Reduces returns
- and charge backs
- Improves Your Customers Satisfaction – Consistent, accurate,
- on-time deliveries
WHAT SETS Paper-to-EDI APART?
V2 TECHNOLOGY PLATFORM
Paper-to-EDI services are supported by the most sophisticated
and advanced data extraction and workflow technologies.
Our proprietary V2 production platform represents best-in-class
technology. Some of V2's unique features and capabilities include:
"FREE FORM" OCR TECHNOLOGIES
At the heart of the V2 technology platform are the most advanced
recognition systems available. We have developed best-in-class
free form OCR, ICR and OMR engines, forms factors and recognition
tools to create a world-class automated recognition system.
DATA TRANSLATION
V2 can map BOL data to virtually every Freight Scheduling system.
Not to mention any and all standard EDI data formats, as well as
custom file formats.
INVENTORY CONTROL
Utilizing a centralized inventory control database, Paper-to-EDI
tracks every page of every order through every step of our
production processes. The sophistication and precision of our
inventory tracking is the reason we can offer SLA guarantees
of 100% inventory control.
QUALITY PROGRAM
The Paper-to-EDI Quality Program starts with our commitment
to our customers. Understanding our customer’s expectations
and knowing how well we fulfill those expectations drives
everything we do. Like many best in class organizations, we
measure our organization’s success by the number of promoters
we create among our customer base. Customer input also helps
us prioritize our process improvement efforts.
When process problems are identified, we use quality improvement
methodologies such as LEAN and SIX SIGMA to continuously
improve those areas. Whether it’s a cycle time improvement
opportunity where we can apply LEAN concepts to take out waste
and non-value added work, or a defect reduction project that may
benefit from the statistical and analytical rigor of SIX SIGMA,
we use proven tools to improve both the speed and effectiveness
with which we deliver services to customers.
SLA GUARANTEES
Our SLA (Service Level Agreement) Guarantees are customized
to meet the specific needs of each of our clients. In most cases
our SLAs focus on three specific quality measurements: DATA
ACCURACY, TURNAROUND and INVENTORY CONTROL.
DATA ACCURACY
Minimum Data Accuracy Rates of 99.5% or Better
TURNAROUND
20 – 30 Minute Delivery of BOL Data and Indexed Image Files
INVENTORY CONTROL
100% of Documents Accounted for and Recorded
SECURITY
We take the safety and security of your data very seriously. We
understand the consequences to our clients, of a security breach.
In 14 years of processing financial documents, we have never had
a security breach. This is because Paper-to-EDI utilizes the most
advance security protocols available. Highlights include:
• All data and image files are stored and managed from highly
secure Class A data centers.
• Unlike others, we do not transfer data or image files overseas,
to at-home staff, or remote data editing centers.
• Each employee is subject to thorough background screenings
utilizing nationally recognized investigation bureaus. We run
complete background and credit checks on all new hires.
• We conduct monthly security audits in conjunction with our
SAS70 Type II certification.
DEPENDABILITY
Dependability in BOL data lift services means consistently
meeting accuracy and turnaround time commitments and
maintaining high system uptimes. Paper-to-EDI provides you
the most dependable performance anywhere. But our view of
dependability goes beyond these measures. We also believe that
being highly responsive and quick to resolve customer requests is
paramount. Come experience the dependability of Paper-to-EDI.
ABOUT Paper-to-EDI
Paper-to-EDI is an outsourced solutions provider specializing in
automated data extraction and document management solutions.
We enable our clients to benefit from cutting-edge technologies
without the financial, IT, and personnel resources traditionally
required. Our services create efficiencies that generate savings
in operating budgets. We are paid with a portion of these savings.