“Why would anyone want to replace perfectly good
software with Axon software?”
“Because before Axon it was easily double the work.”
PrimeLink Logistics
of Delta, BC hauls containers throughout western Canada and the
United States. Randy Kennedy, Controller, talks about their
“Axon Experience.”
 Tell
us about your experience with Axon.
“Well, I was a Maddocks guy for the last eight or nine years [‘Maddocks’
refers to a trucking software product now owned and marketed by TMW
Systems]. I was very familiar with Maddocks - the good and the bad.
Taking on a new system, I was told that it was going to be very
straightforward, user friendly, yada, yada, yada. If you talk to
Maddocks, they say the same thing. But, from what I’ve seen and the
help that we’ve been given, as far as I’m concerned, Axon is head
and tails above Maddocks.
Axon is certainly a lot simpler to use. Maddocks
has too many sub-ledgers and things like that where you’re having to
work with register after register after register before the
transactions are completed. It’s just very cumbersome. This is very
easy.
With Axon, if you’ve got a problem, if you have
to void an invoice and re-invoice for whatever reason, it’s about a
four-second job. With Maddocks, it’s time consuming, and there is so
much room for error because you basically have to credit and then
re-bill. And if the credit doesn’t match the re-bill, or vice versa,
it screws things up so.
Whereas, Axon is basically very simple, very easy
to use. Someone says, ‘Oh, we shouldn’t have billed FFC on this’. I
go in, and it takes two seconds. I find the invoice, I copy and void
it, I edit it, and I re-invoice it.
And with the support staff that you guys have
there, we’ve been able to work through any issues or questions that
we’ve had. We’re very happy with it.”
Has Axon changed the way you do your fuel
taxes?
“Absolutely. They used to be done manually. Now, any of the reports
that we need for just about anything is basically a two-second
process. The fuel tax used to take forever. It’s a lot simpler now.
It has also changed the way we download our fuel
transactions, which saves hours as opposed to having to get the
invoice, set it up as a payable and go through and have to set each
driver up to be charged the amount, with the taxes and everything
else.
With Axon, it’s just a click, click, click,
click, and you’re done.”
Has anything changed in the way you do your
invoicing?
“We used to pump out mega invoices with all the backup paperwork.
Now we’re going green and trying to eliminate as much as we can of
the paperwork that needs to be sent—photocopies and things like
that. The system makes it very easy. We scan what we need, attach it
to the invoice and email it to the customer.
 We’ve
probably got about 95 percent of our customers now getting the
invoice and backup paperwork by email. It’s obviously saving on
postage and envelopes, but also, by not needing to package that
material up and mail it, we’ve saved a lot of time.
And it’s very simple to use so it’s not like you
need one person that has to be trained for hours and hours. It’s
something that is quick and easy and off it goes.
Are you running your operation with the same
number of office staff since switching to Axon?
“We’ve probably got one person less, but everyone else has picked up
the slack. There’s no question; we could grow here, probably
increase our number of units by [50 to 75 percent] and not really
have to add any more bodies to handle the clerical stuff - the fuel
downloads or fuel tax or any of those things.
Before Axon, we were entering the loads and then
putting them into the accounting program, so it was easily double
the work.”
If your peers in the industry were to ask you
about Axon, how would you describe your experience?
“Oh, I’ve done it a lot. I’ve worked with a guy for years and his
company, unfortunately, is hooked into Maddocks, and they can’t get
out. They’ve got four or five different operations running it, and
they just can’t get out. They’re not happy, but there’s nothing they
can do. Every time I talk to him about it, he tells me to shut up
because he doesn’t want to hear it.
So, you know, that’s the only thing that I can
say. It’s very, very simple and straightforward and well thought
out.
I think what happened with Maddocks is they
started as a trucking program and then added all the financial stuff
and the back end. I talked to accountants at the old company that I
was at, and they said the financial package that was added is 15
years out of date.
I don’t want to badmouth Maddocks. I’m just
saying that Axon is very good, very straightforward. You know,
payroll, taxes, any of those things - it’s ‘push a button,’ and it
just pops out. It’s very, very simple and straightforward.”
Changing software can be very stressful. How
have your people handled it?
“So far the people here have had nothing but good things to say
about it. There’s no question, it was a change; but it was a simple
change. It was a very smooth changeover, and that made a big
difference. There’s nobody complaining here now. It’s just like ‘Why
would you ever go back to the old way?’ It’s not even an issue. I’m
sure they’ve all forgotten how to use the old system because this
one is just so straightforward.”
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