In an increasingly globalized world where enterprises have ceased from being just local enterprises to serving customers anywhere in the world, competitiveness has become one of the most discussed and sought after goals of business enterprises. Offering solutions that not only meet customers’ expectations but that exceed them, and providing quality service to their consumers are two fundamental factors to consider when starting any type of business. “Document Software” or “Document Management Software”, a term that represents a wide range of applications, solutions or systems used for improving the management of business processes related to all kinds of documents, has taken an increasingly important role over the last years.

Today’s Information Technologies and their application to business ends can make a company standout and clearly distinguish itself from the competition. Thanks to the many technological options that the market offers today, organizations can know more about their target audience, speed up their business processes, reduce their costs and turn their employees into a more productive and cost effective team.

Using technology can improve any enterprise. However, there are business sectors in which companies could not even compete in a globalized world if they didn’t have an intelligent IT infrastructure. This is the case of the Logistics and Distribution sector. In fact, it’s been demonstrated that companies with large logistic departments are the most technologically advanced. For Logistic and Distribution companies it would be unthinkable to run their business smoothly without being backed up by a sophisticated document software solution.

Why is this? Because only a fraction of the costs of a distribution company is for transporting goods from point A to point B. Actual costs where there is potential for savings rest in other areas. It is in these areas where implementing technology, especially document software, can help to reduce costs and simplify processes.

The most common document problem: management of delivery notes

One of the most critical areas for logistic companies has to do with the entire process of managing delivery notes. Until recently, design of delivery notes an related documents was performed with pre-printed paper or static documents with the consequent waste of paper and time involved in the production of each delivery note. In fact, many companies continue to use these outdated procedures, which have a direct influence on a company’s corporate image and the quality of service that it offers its clients.

Distribution of delivery notes is another critical area for logistic companies, since in many cases they are printed by several delegations which greatly impacts consumption of communication lines. If an application could support centralized and distributed environments (depending on what’s needed) and it could manage the whole document management and delivery process, the problem would be solved, and the time spent managing delivery notes would also be considerably optimized.

When goods are delivered or services are performed, clients sign receipts for the transactions and return them to the company to be archived and possibly retrieved at a later date if required. To facilitate these transactions, it is fundamental to have document software solution that is can be easily integrated with the existing business processes and is able to digitalize and automatically store each of these documents in databases dedicated for this purpose.

The importance of a single and comprehensive document software solution

By implementing document software solutions, logistic companies will simplify and optimize their administrative processes, without having to limit themselves to single parts, like printing delivery notes, but also integrate and streamline related business processes and therefore respond more quickly and efficiently to their clients. With this in mind, a company should first have a closer look at the involved business areas in order to determine its exact needs regarding document technology.

Once the document management requirements have been determined, it´s important to evaluate the different document software options present in the market that best meet the needs of the Logistic and Distribution sectors, and match every single requirement found, like generation, distribution and storage of delivery notes and related documents, and make sure that the document software of choice, not only fulfills some specific tasks very well but also integrates seamlessly with other existing processes. The ultimate choice should be a complete solution that enables logistical and distribution companies to cover all of their specific documentation needs, where the management of delivery notes is one of their core business processes, but not the only one where flexibility, integrability with the company’s business applications and scalability, is key to to being able to grow with the company’s expansion and growth needs.

Additionally, logistics companies could improve the impact of their marketing campaigns with targeted Transpromo advertising, a process in which personalized advertising messages are embedded directly into transactional documents (delivery notes, receipts, contracts, etc.) based of specific customer data.

You may find divers software programs or complete solutions that cover the needs or logistic and distribution enterprises, but this is not an easy choice, as implementation of document software may affect existing business processes. Therefore the best choice for most logistic and distribution enterprises will be a specific, single logistic and distribution software solution, composed of fully integrated, standard applications, that cover the entire cycle of delivery note processing, from design, generation, archiving and distribution of printed documents via email fax, and covers also real-time document creation in Web environments, electronically signed documents, indexed storage and instant on-line retrieval.

Author Bio: Julio Olivares – President and founder of DocPath Solutions – The Document Software Company Published by Andre Klein Internet Marketing Consultant

Category: Business
Keywords: software, logistic, distribution, delivery notes