Meridian Awards 2010

Other firms need good transport logistics apart from those which provide transportation services: our software targets trading and production companies who have to plan and organize their order processing through a network of owner-drivers and carriers and/or their own transport.

For these companies, and especially those for whom transport logistics is not their core business, but is nevertheless a crucial part of their delivery process, B-Bright has developed a tailor made suite of software, that precisely meets the needs of any firm which has to use transport services provided by self-employed drivers or outside carriers, to reduce costs, save time and improve results.

B-B Logistics is an advanced tool for order delivery planning. Its graphic interface is based on a geographical map and is provided with additional utilities, such as cost calculation, productivity, automatic e-mailing, etc., in order to allow even un-skilled users to do quickly the work that otherwise would have to be done by very experienced logistics personnel and, anyway, take much longer.

Benefits

• Drastic time saving in delivery plan scheduling
• Travel optimization and, therefore, transport cost optimization
• Fewer mistakes
• Reduction in the number of personnel employed in transport scheduling
• Reduction in phone and fax calls, and so in cost, to carriers (thanks to the web application and the automatic mailing system)
• Drastic simplification in travel organization.

Features

Automatic geocoding of the delivery points (through our B-B Geocode and Mapinfo Mapmarker™ software), with the ability to make changes manually too.

Automatic visualization of the delivery orders on a geographical map (with maximum detail right down to the street number level).

Automatic aggregation of selling orders for each delivery address.

Graphical display of the loading percentage for each order.

Complete integration between an order and its graphical display, to make searching easy: if you click on an order, the map centres itself on the relevant address, and, vice versa, if you click on a graphic symbol on the map, you highlight the order in the table.

Order delivery planning for single or multiple drops.

Handles part order delivery and organises the delivery of the remainder.

Real-time control of the loading percentage reached, both in terms of volume and weight for each type of vehicle.

Order organization in macro/micro delivery zones.

Carriers price lists organized by province/district/vehicle type, with costs divided by fuel and service.

Carrier file which includes any possible extra charges for additional unloading or sundries.

Search for the best carrier among those available for a given trip, including delivery cost comparison.

Automatic generation of the delivery plan by delivery points with detailed information on route and distances (such as from the first delivery, total, etc.). It is possible to correct delivery orders manually.

Simulation of the daily deliveries and their display on a map by delivery order.

Automatic acceptance of the delivery order by e-mail from the carrier through a special web portal, with consequent saving in phone calls and faxes.

Delivery orders

The delivery orders application displays a virtual desk which, through a simple interface, allows the user to schedule all the vehicle trips.

The screen is divided in three parts:

1. in the upper part you find the table of orders for delivery, grouped by destination address;
2. the map of the delivery points in the lower part shows each delivery point and the percentage of the load reached there;
3. the right hand part contains the list of the orders. The operator can create all the delivery orders he/she needs and assign them to the deliveries just by dragging them from the map or from the table to the delivery order.

The three panels are interactive: clicking on an order description you highlight it on the map, and vice versa. Through drag-and-drop you can associate orders to delivery orders; when orders are completely scheduled, they will disappear from the map and fill the delivery orders.

The operator can choose the zoom level of the map, which can go down to street number level.

At any time you can check the details of a single delivery order to see data and/or modify important information such as the relevant carrier (choosing from those available, on the basis of the route and his commitments, organized by increasing cost), the vehicle type, etc., or notes for/from the sales office. Or, more simply, you can print the travel card, whichmay contain the proposed route too or other information, in addition to the delivery order,that will be given to the carrier (who receives it anyway automatically by e-mail as soon as the delivery order is confirmed).

You will get the final schedule of delivery orders as soon as you confirm the carrier and, in the case of multiple drops, the delivery sequence.

Up to the last moment the system helps you to make the best choice, enabling you to select the carrier whose cost is the lowest, based on the price lists previously uploaded, the number of drops, etc.

When the delivery schedule is confirmed, the carrier receives an e-mail containing a link to the company web portal, from which he/she can look at the transport details and accept or refuse the trip.

The carrier’s answer, positive or negative, will be reported in real-time to the delivery scheduling operator.

At any time you may need to look at the scheduled trips, divided by number plate, displayed on the screen to see, through the simulation tool, whether any further optimization is possible. B-B Logistics includes this function too, whichis particularly helpful for those companies that deliver just-in-time, for whom last minute purchase orders can be handled, and added to deliveries on the point of departure. In this case too the operator can chose the map detail level.

Communication with carriers

This module makes communication with carriers automatic.

As a delivery order is finally scheduled, an e-mail is sent (of course if the carrier is equipped for that). The e-mail informs the carrier that he is asked to make a trip and contains a link to the company web portal, from which the carrier may:

• check the journey features, such as destination, number of drops, materials, etc.
• confirm or refuse a trip
• check the contract terms
• consult the archive of the former deliveries carried out for the company
• other personalized utilities

The operator will always have an up-to-date form to hand displaying the communication to and from carriers and the carrier's acceptance or refusal.

Carriers’ price lists

The selection of the cheapest available carrier for each journey has, obviously, to pass through an economic analysis.

With regard to this, B-B Logistics provides for the complete management of the carriers’ price lists, with advanced functions that easily relate each carrier to his/her work zones (provinces, districts, etc.) and to the type of vehicles available.

The route price can be set on the basis of the contracts stipulated with each carrier, taking into consideration also additional drops and/or possible agreed surcharges.

The transport cost can be separated from the fuel cost in order to facilitate advantage analysis.

The carrier’s form simplifies the control of the work-zones by vehicle type and highlights the lack of a valid price list for the route. This function is very useful to avoid that the program for the automatic selection of the cheapest carrier could discard some carrier because of oversights or mistakes.

Geocodification

Every delivery point, in order to be displayed on the map, has to be correctly geocodified.

Geocodifying means assigning its latitude and longitude, on the basis of the information given by the address itself.

As manual geocodifying, even using advanced tools such as special software, internet maps, etc., cannot be proposed for those companies which receive dozens or even hundreds of orders a day from different clients, B-B Logistics solves this problem with a special application which automatically geocodifies all the new addresses entered in the ERP system and/or corrects any geocodification when changes occur.

Unfortunately addresses entered by operators are sometimes defective, as the chance of a human error is always ‘round the corner and for this reason the automatic geocodification system cannot always find the delivery point on the map.

The geocodification screen accomplishes the task of warning operators of uncertainties or mistakes in order to allow human intervention to make corrections.

Operating reports

B-B Logistics includes a wide range of operating reports, such as the “Loading report”, the “Order check report”, the “Deliveries schedule by carrier report”, the “Delivery maps”, etc.

All these reports are useful also in order to control all the transport activities and this is the reason why it is possible just to look at them on the screen without necessarily printing them.

In addition every report can be exported to Word, Excel, Acrobat (pdf) and/or sent by e-mail.