Dive Brief:
- Alabama-based carrier R.E. Garrison Trucking and its brokerage division have adopted automated load appointment scheduling software in an effort to reduce tedious, manual work.
- The company tapped Qued for automation software for requesting and securing load appointments, thereby replacing the need to call or email customers or log onto a dedicated website to do so, the transportation company said in a June 19 new release.
- “Our customers have been very pleased as it also saves time and stress on their end,” R.E. Garrison Director of Customer Service Lauren Meneau said in a statement.
Dive Insight:
Making appointments to pick up loads had been a difficult task to automate, but Qued software has helped save R.E. Garrison roughly 60 hours in staff time during its first two months of use, according to the release.
Qued’s software is for carriers, 3PLs and shippers, where the company seeks to address the amount of time spent jumping between different app screens or websites and reentering information, according to a joint company statement with tech partner McLeod Software in January.
Other transportation firms are also ramping up automation. C.H. Robinson Worldwide created technology to eliminate manual processes from scheduling and pickups, and Uber Freight is scaling another approach to hasten such inefficiencies.
Additionally, Qued’s software benefits from artificial intelligence, according to the company. Qued President Tom Curee said in an email that the technology looks at historical lane information “to determine the best time of the available times in the scheduling systems.”
“So we can automatically select times based on the tribal knowledge that the model has learned,” Curee said.
Kansas-based Ryan Transportation piloted and then went live with Qued’s technology earlier this year. Ryan Transportation Senior VP Jeff Henderson said in a news release in May that Qued’s automation tools have meant far less manual data entry, more accurate scheduling and appointment confirmation, increased customer confidence and improved carrier engagement.
“We want our people focused on tasks and duties that are more complex and require intuitive skill, experience and response unique to the customer,” he said in the release. “So, we want to automate as much of the more manual, tedious workflow as we can.”
