“Could YOU double your fleet size without increasing the number
of your office staff?”
Reimer Brothers did! Find out how...
Janice Couch, from
Reimer Brothers Trucking Ltd. of Armstrong BC, spoke recently about
their Axon experience.
Tell us about your job with Reimer Brothers.
“I have worked for Reimer Brothers for approximately three years,
and my job is to take care of all their bookkeeping and accounting
needs.”
How has your experience been in dealing with
Axon?
“We have had nothing but very good stuff to say about Axon. It's
been very positive. When we went live, I had some wonderful people
helping me get started, setting me up and training me on the actual
system. So it was a very good experience, very positive.”
Before you used the Axon software, what were
some of the problems that led you to think about changing the way
you were doing things?
“We were using Simply Accounting, and we were finding that there is
a lot of duplicate work. For example, the fuel tax: we had to set up
spreadsheets, so we were duplicating the work. There was a lot that
we had to remember with driver settlements each month that you had
to remind yourself to do every month for the different drivers. We
were growing as a company, and we needed something that was going to
be more efficient. We were looking at something that was an
accounting system that was designed for a trucking company.”
Did Axon fit that bill?
“Definitely. No doubt about it. It has and had everything that we
needed or required to simplify things - to minimize the work. It was
– it is - very good.”
Has your operation changed in size since you
started with Axon?
“We had seven staff before starting with Axon, running around 26
trucks; and now we have the same number of office staff, and we're
running approximately 50 units.”
Has Axon software affected your staff morale
and your working environment?
“We have an incredible staff here. We always have. We all work very
well as a team. I think that what Axon has done is helped to make
things more accessible for people. For example, prior to having
Axon, a dispatcher would have to physically go and pull an invoice
to be able to look up information. Now, we can look up information
on screen so it helps people to work better together as a team.”
Has that helped you in dealing with your
customers?
“Of course. It helps you to find information easier. When the
customer is phoning and asking for something, you don't have to go
straight to the filing cabinet and pull the invoices and go through
everything; you can actually go to the screen and look up the order
quickly and find the information that they need. So you're able to
deal with the customer a lot more efficiently and quickly.”
Tell us about the support that you receive
from Axon.
“We have a lot of fun. Our customer service rep. is very good, very
patient and very thorough. What I really enjoy is they'll phone back
to check up on me all the time. You know, “Did it work? Is
everything okay?” They're very good. Yeah, I have no issues. It's
just great!
The
training was fabulous. It was very good. Our
trainer was very patient with me and helped me through it, so it's
been good for me. I know for myself, if I haven't understood
something, they've actually gone beyond with me. When there’s stuff
that I don’t understand about computers, they'll walk me through it.
Stuff that's unrelated to Axon. So, they've been very good to me.”
Axon is the only trucking software that lets
you enter something once and have it automatically and instantly
update every area of the software that uses that information. Have
you found this “Real-Time Total Integration” to be useful?
“Well, one of the things that I always say about Axon that I really
like is the fact that somebody can walk into my office and say, ‘Can
you deduct this from this owner operator's statement for the next
five months?’ And what's really nice is you can go and plug that in
and forget about it.
That is one thing which was really tough before
because you always had to make notes to remind yourself. Now,
everything is done right automatically. It goes to the right places
and, you know, it just works really well that way; I really like
that fact. You plug it in and you forget about it. The information
is all there; there's lots of room to put notes in. Recurring stuff,
like licensing and drug and alcohol, you just plug it in once, and
it's there. It’s very straightforward.
I can
download fuel bills. That's just a dream.
We download them off of the Shell website, and it's in our system
and the
fuel tax is done! It's all broken down so the drivers don't
have any issues. I have had very few complaints about anything being
wrong in that area where before that was constant. There were
errors, and that's all because you're duplicating the work. You're
taking it from here, and you’re putting it here, and then you've got
to put it here; and there's always room for error when there's
duplication, always.”
If one of your peers in the industry asks you
about Axon, how would you describe your experience?
“Well, I have already done that several times. People have asked me
about Axon, and I'm very positive because it has been, for myself, a
very positive experience. So, there's not really anything I can say
that's negative about Axon. I would highly recommend it.”
|
