Cut Your Workload by Fifty Percent

All Points Freight Inc. of Bradford, ON is a 16 year-old, long-haul, flatbed trucking company carrying steel and equipment to the US. In this recent interview with Axon's Jason Kretzer, Rachelle Oosterhuis of All Points speaks out about her company's experience with Axon.

When did you start using Axon's Trucking Industry Software?
"I believe it's been since the spring of 2003."

Tell us about your experience dealing with Axon.
"It has definitely made everything streamlined and simple. It's taken a lot of the workload off of the office. Personally, I think it's the most amazing thing we've done. We were using sort of a makeshift system prior to that, through AccPac, and it just wasn't working. It wasn't integrating with the dispatching. This [Axon] just took care of all the problems that we ever had, and so far we haven't run into anything that we need to change. It's working wonderfully."

Describe some of the ways Axon has changed your business.
"The biggest change for the accounting department is driver settlements. We pay everyone as an owner operator and we're able to, in one step, produce their equipment statement and pay them without any manual labor involved. It has taken a day's work away every week."

Has your invoicing changed?
"It's completely improved it. It took away two other steps that we were doing because we would take the manual paper from dispatch and enter it in one system and then in a completely separate accounting system -- it would take another day to enter it into the AccPac system. And, if we made a mistake, we would be reconciling two systems to find where we'd gone wrong."

How have people's jobs changed since you've been using the system?
"I remember when we first were training on it, and I think it was Joanne that trained us, and she said, "This will cut your workload by fifty percent." And we laughed because there's only two of us here; and it has, it completely has. But that's allowed us to sort of catch up on the non-accounting, non-dispatching issues that we have. More human resource problems and safety and compliance - it picked up on those ends for us, so . . . it saves a lot of time."

Has Axon helped your trucking company's bottom line?
"Definitely. Like I said, because we're able to do more, outside of the actual dispatching and the accounting, there's just more opportunity to do different things in the office, so we can increase revenues other ways. You know, through sales and different things. There's not as much work, so we're saving money in time.

We're taking that time to be able to better analyze what trucks are good, which ones are bad, control our purchasing, and so on."

Has the system been able to change the way you deal with your customers?
"Oh, definitely. If a customer calls in and they need information, we are able to find it within seconds as opposed to our old way of doing it which was mostly manual. We'd always have to get back to the customer because it would be a matter of finding hard copies and switching back and forth from the two systems we were using. It's a definite time saver for the customer."

Tell us about the support and training from Axon.
"It's incredible. You call, and they're immediately attentive to your problem. And the fact that we can work online together and see what each other's doing is awesome. Prior to this, we would have to call in a specialist to come in and you'd have to schedule him, and that might not be for three days. You'd be down for three days wondering what was happening. But Axon has been incredible."

In comparing Axon to your other system, there's quite a difference in --
"There's no comparison!"

How have you found that Axon's real-time, all-directional integration -- the ability to enter information once and have it instantly update all the programs in your system - has helped your company?
"Oh, like I said, it's saved us so many steps and so much, uh, thinking -- I guess you could put it that way -- in trying to remember all those steps and where everything's supposed to go. It's almost unbelievable that it accounts for all the GL accounts, accounts receivable, and payables, and everything, all in one step!"

How would you describe the ease of use of the software?
"On a scale of one to ten it's an eleven. Any time there's upgrades, I don't even have to question them. I mean, Derek will send an email and it'll say that there's been an upgrade and we might have to call him to learn how to use this step, but we never need to; it's so user friendly. It's been really good."

How did you find the training and implementation, and the conversion from the old system to the new system?
"I think it took about . . . probably a good two to three weeks to get used to it, but after that there was no looking back. There wasn't even a question that this wasn't working or we're still not sure. I think the training was about a week maybe in total, over the internet, and . . . incredible. It's so self explanatory."

If one of your peers in the trucking industry would ask you about Axon Trucking Software, how would you describe the program and the experience that you've had.
"It's been a wonderful experience. It's very user friendly and I'd highly recommend it. And many times I have told other trucking companies what we use and that they should get on board!"