Improved Processes Mean Improved Service

Our process for integrating new technologies across Apple locations has evolved as technology provides opportunities for greater success. Gone are the days of tunnel vision, yellow legal pads, and single-minded decisions. We have greatly benefited from participating in advisory panels with associations like IAM and technology providers like EDC-Movestar. Through the EDC Advisory Panel, not only do we get to connect with our industry counterparts, but we also engage in open discussions and can explore the perspectives of a developer, an industry executive/owner, and a boots-on-the-ground user. We challenge one another with untethered discussions to hopefully find the best possible solutions.

We are always motivated by serving our customer, whether internal customers like a driver or co-worker at another branch or in another department, or an external customer like a TSP/agent. But most of all, the men and women that honorably serve our country every day. It is exciting to explore and create solutions that improve efficiency for our teams, improve communication with our customers, and provide cost savings solutions.

Creating and improving technology solutions not only for our internal teams but with and for our industry allows us all to become more efficient and customer-focused. The creation of Gogistix was like a customer data super-highway for Industry, and we are all better for it. EDC has done it again with the creation of EasyTariff—a new super-highway to revenue data that improves billing efficiency, reduces billing steps and errors, and increases opportunity for customer diversification. For those of us who use Movestar, they have made tremendous improvements in the last six months to shipment billing and revenue distribution that provide the same tools that Easy Tariff does, but within the operating system.

I am proud to be a part of an organization like Apple Moving that recognizes the importance of technological innovation. Our president, Jon Minor, not only challenges his teams to think outside the box using technology, he commits to it with investment. With the onset of COVID-19, our IT team, lead by Kit Rash, was able to swiftly execute a plan to get all 10 of our locations working in remote environments. He secured our employees’ safety without causing a disruption to our customers. Thanks to previous investment in all aspects of our business’ infrastructure, the transition was seamless. It is technology partners like EDC, Microsoft, InTouch- VOIP, and RightNetworks that help make the seamless transition possible.

I think there is a lot of opportunity for exploration of the improvement and consistency of digital shipment documents within our industry. Paper represents a waste of a natural resources, is extremely inefficient for our customers, creates opportunity for errors, and poses document storage issues.

Additionally, old-school shipment documents result in lag time from date of service all the way through to execution of billing and even adjudication of claims. After living through a year of COVID-19 where we all learned how to pivot and improve our business process virtually for the safety of our teams and customers, I think we are truly at a point where the simple creation and completion of all our shipment documents in a virtual environment for our boots-on-the-ground teams may be an industry game changer.