Investing in innovative
Challenge
In a bid to add further value to our services and improve operational efficiencies, we focussed on improving communications both with our customers and their hauliers, whilst also reducing the administrative burden on our team and system. We wanted to offer our customers greater visibility across our operation, as well as access to our extensive haulage network.
Solution
We conducted a major development of our communication and haulage management systems, with several value-adding changes being introduced for both our customers and haulage partner network including our:
- Haulier Portal: We developed an online portal for hauliers, providing real time information regarding order details and status. This allows the hauliers to plan more efficiently – saving the time, costs, and emissions associated with wasted haulage miles.
- Automatic Alerts: Our new sophisticated alert system sends real time updates to our customers and their chosen hauliers. This ensures complete transparency in the delivery supply chain at all times. Hauliers are notified of trailer allocation and receive load confirmation instantly and the system also monitors driving time for deliveries. It can therefore notify hauliers, and our customer, if the order is at risk of being delivered late. An alert will also be sent to customers if a haulier is late in collecting an order, allowing them to notify their onward customers.
- Vehicle Booking: We have streamlined our ‘by road’ inbound delivery system with an investment in our new IT solution. Hauliers can now access a portal to notify our team of their expected arrival at UK Paper Hub, which allows us to operate with maximum efficiency and ensure minimal waiting times for hauliers.
Value
Our customer now has the confidence of complete transparency, with detailed live updates regarding our haulage service, including advanced notification of any risk of late deliveries. This allows them to communicate with their own customers proactively to manage expectations and build stronger more trusting relationships.
The highly automated nature of our new system reduces the administrative burden for all parties, especially hauliers, by minimising the need for phone calls, emails, etc. It also helps to reduce any instances of human error in communication and planning, for greater efficiency.
Finally, a reduction in wasted road miles and time benefits everyone by ensuring more sustainable operations, and it specifically strengthens our relationships with our network to provide UK Paper Hub customers with more haulage options.
