Moving Mountains of Paper in Transportation

Transportation is among the most heavily regulated industries in the world and is loaded with paper work. Tracking details of customer shipments is the highest priority and much of it is done on paper such as packing slips, weigh bills, invoices, bills of lading all of which have to be filed and kept to prove goods were delivered.

Managing the supply chain is challenging, it starts with sales orders and ends with proof of delivery and receipt of payment. In between there are manufacturing processes, reports, employee reviews and expense management. All of these tasks involve a great amount of paperwork. Dealing with all of these paper documents is very demanding since they are moved around, written on, signed, and eventually need to be filed somewhere to be found later. Document management software can help manage all of this information by scanning all the paperwork into the repository and route it to the correct people thereby making the documents easy to find.

Sample documents that a DMS help manage

In addition to customer related paperwork, there is a great deal of permits and licensing required in transportation. Typical transportation documents include interstate operating authority permission, insurance documentation including for hazardous materials, process forms, drug test documentation, Form 2290 the Heavy Highway Vehicle Use Tax Return Number, DOT documentation, drivers license with the proper endorsements, valid medical card, tractor and trailer registration, Hazmat documentation including emergency response information, and bill of lading.

Drive your business with document management software

With the steady increase in gas prices, budgets have little room for managing and storing mountains of paper. Valuable documents can be stored electronically which eliminates the need to store the paper copies. Documents become easily accessible and can be viewed from the head office to the branch office to the warehouse to the delivery driver.

Read a case study on how one transportation company eliminated the paper from their accounting processes.