Transportation Software for RB High Tech
RB High Tech Transportation Inc. of San
Francisco, CA hauls high-end electronics, medical equipment, and
fine art throughout the US and Canada. We spoke with Kathleen
Browne, Chief Financial Officer for High Tech, about their Axon
Transportation Software experience. Here is what she had to say.
 Tell
us about RB High Tech.
"Craig started in 1984 with just one truck, working as an owner
operator. In 1992, he went on his own and started the company then
known as RB Air Transport, hauling primarily high-end electronics.
In 2000, we changed the name to RB High Tech Transportation. We've
expanded the business; we do line haul and local work for the San
Francisco Bay area. We've also moved into medical equipment
and fine arts. We move artwork all over the country for the
Smithsonian, the Metropolitan Museum, the Whitney Museum, the
Brooklyn Museum."
Tell
us about your experience with Axon Transportation Software.
"Oh, absolutely wonderful. It's been truly amazing for us because
if we've any questions, or we've had any changes that we've needed
made in the program to make it fit, everybody's just been extremely
helpful.
And it's just been a pleasure to work with Axon.
The Axon software system, the program itself, is very user friendly. If you
make a mistake, there are ways to go and change it, it's not there
forever. And that's the problem we had with the other program that
we were using -- there just wasn't any way to correct a mistake."
How
has Axon helped you solve some of your problems?
"We were using three separate programs before to do the same thing
we are now doing with Axon. We had a program that we wrote our
bills on. Once we actually printed a bill and went on to print the
next bill, [the first bill] was no longer visible in the system. It
would just go away. And then you print the next bill, and that one
would go away and you'd never see it again. So any of the
information that you typed on that bill, once you printed it and
left, it was gone.
When the drivers would take their bills out, make
their deliveries, come back, we would rate them. I would go into a
separate accounting program and invoice. So all that information
that we had printed on the bill, I had to go back and put it in the
invoice. And re-enter all that information again. Craig would then
take all of the bill ratings and he would sit down and he would
re-enter all that information again into a separate program that he
had for his settlements. So we would enter everything three or four
times in order to get the final result.
And then, if we hired additional outside labor to
help our drivers - a forklift or extra equipment or something like
that - we would have to try and remember to charge that against that
particular bill. With Axon, the information's already there. So we
already know that has to come off the bill before we pay the
drivers.
It's a one-step process as opposed to the four or
five steps we were doing before."
How
has Axon helped improve your office productivity?
"The whole thing has flown so much smoother that it is giving
me more time to do other things that I have to take care of.
We've been able to be more productive. And it's all because of
Axon transportation software."
Any
idea what your annual return on investment might be using the Axon
system over the past couple of years?
"I couldn't really tell you from a monetary perspective, but from a
frustration level, for me, it's huge. I would say in time alone
it's gotta be way up there. And for Craig, it's just been so
much easier."
Has
working with Axon helped you to maintain or improve your customer
relations?
"Oh yeah. Right in the program, we're able to fax them
reports or bill ratings or confirmation pages. That type of thing.
I can go in and receive a fax and an invoice right from the system.
Or email it -- we do that a lot. We email their statements - it's
easier too - before, we'd print them out."
Do
you use the document-imaging portion of the software?
"I do. I really like it because, you know, we were able to actually
put it right in with the order so you could go in there and take a
look at it, and it was really good. And a couple of times we had
orders we'd picked up at the airport that had damage when we picked
them up and so the guys took pictures. We were able to
scan those
pictures and put them right into that order so when you pulled
up the order, the scanned pictures were right there. And that
was really nice."
How
would you compare the support you've received from Axon with other
vendors?
"Oh, it doesn't compare. We used to use Peachtree, (and I used it
for probably 27 years), and I've never had the support with
Peachtree that I have with Axon. You know, I actually wound up
hiring an outside computer person one time and taught her the
Peachtree program so that she could try to help me figure out the
problems we were having. Because Peachtree couldn't, so in
that respect, it's been great. If I come up with a question
and somebody in your support group doesn't have an answer right
away, they say, "I don't know. I'll get right back to you."
And they do. They come back with answers. And they take
it to the programmers, so the access that your support group lets us
have to your programs is amazing."
Give
us a bit of feedback on the training.
"That was great. To be actually able to work on our computer with
you at the same time, that was really great. That's something we
didn't have with the other programs. Of course, that made the
training a lot easier. You were able to ask questions.
And each person in the office was able to take their own training
time, which was really nice. They already had their own
questions to ask, and then together we were able to help each other
out. It was very good."
If
one of your peers in the industry asked you about Axon, how would
you describe it?
"We've told a lot of our peers about
Axon Transportation Software . I just don't see a better
program out there. We looked and looked and looked before we
decided on Axon. And one of the reasons that we actually chose Axon
is because you were accessible, you know, a lot of the programs we
were looking at, they weren't accessible. You couldn't get them on
the phone to talk to them, to ask them questions, that type of
thing. And that's the biggest thing that I tell people in the
industry, "If you're looking for a program, this is it, because they
are accessible."
What
would you say is the biggest issue your business faces on a daily
basis?
"Keeping trucks moving (laugh). Keeping the trucks moving, that's
the biggest. But Axon gives us more time to do that, to look for
freight and that type of thing. It's freed us up to do that,
and that's made a big difference."
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