Solution Seeker: Highland Transport, one of Canada’s largest truckload carriers, with operations across Canada and the United States. The company is headquartered in Toronto, with facilities in Montreal, Vancouver, Calgary and Moncton. Established in 1967, Highland Transport now has Canada’s largest fleet of 53-ft. trailers and serves a wide range of customers.

Solution Provider: Microdea Inc. delivers industry-specific and scalable document imaging, management and workflow solutions using their flagship product, Synergize.

The Issue: Company management took on the challenge of finding a modern document management system to streamline numerous paper-based functions including invoicing, tracking shipment documents, driver reimbursements and other administrative activities. With hundreds of deliveries all over the continent every day, Highland Transport needed a centralized record of driver payment and goods received, among other things. “It was really part of a bigger challenge of integrating our processes into a unified system that could grow for the future, especially into Internet service,” recalls Kenneth Khan, credit manager, Highland Transport.

Highland Transport recognized a need to improve customer service and achieve greater administrative efficiency through better document management. In addition to invoicing and driver payments, the company wanted to integrate controlled workflow and management of delivery-related documents to decrease the chance of a document being misfiled. The goal was to deliver fast, security-protected access to important documents, both by internal office staff and remote users. The system chosen would also have to be highly scalable for the future.

The Solution: After reviewing a number of vendors and their products, Highland Transport chose Microdea for their technical expertise and ability to integrate Synergize with the existing AS400 systems. In addition, Synergize met Highland Transportation ‘s needs for a scalable solution that could be customized to their unique needs and easily accommodate their growing client lists.

The Results: Synergize quickly helped Highland Transport turn its paper trail into easily accessible information that can be simultaneously retrieved from any location, allowing timely and informed decision-making. Customer service staff can now deliver faster customer service as they have direct access to real time information. Valuable staff time is no longer spent manually searching for information in order to photocopy or fax it to the client.

The cost of doing business to invoice over four hundred clients was reduced; paper storage and filing costs have been minimized while billing cycles have been significantly shortened. More invoices can be produced in less time, past due invoice notices are automated and all invoices are now sent electronically.

Highland Transportation ‘s customers now have quick access to scanned documents via Highland’s Web site, allowing them to directly view, print or e-mail paperwork providing them with faster, more efficient access.

“I am really enjoying the Synergize system. Once it is up and running, the benefits are just tremendous, ” added Khan.