Cheetah Speed - Vol 1.3

What Do Logistics Really Mean to a Transportation Company?

Editor's Notes: in this Issue

Welcome to the March issue of Cheetah Speed. There is much excitement in the world of Cheetah software as new installations come online and our product gets noted as best-of- breed for its category by users and reviewers alike. In this issue we show you why it makes economic sense to simply subscribe to our software. And check out our Scope section to find out a little more about the art and science of logistics and how they apply to the transportation industry. In the next two issues we will be spotlighting Benton Express from Atlanta, Georgia. We caught up with their Director of Information Technologies, Mark Headrick and does he has a story to tell. Benton spent 18 months evaluating over 20 different systems before they decided to go with Cheetah.

We hope you enjoy this new issue of Cheetah Speed and would love to get your input and feelings. What do you see taking place in the trucking and delivery industry? Send your comments, your thoughts and your ideas to

info@cheetah.com

Best,

Larry Jaffe
Editor, Cheetah Speed

Scope: What do logistics really mean to a transportation company?

Logistics – you hear this word mentioned all the time. But what does it really mean in the nuts-and-bolts world of moving packages and people?

Indeed, at first look, delivering freight appears to be a rather simple operation. The task of moving freight or people from point A to point B necessitates planning and scheduling in order to complete the task. When you take apart all the various steps from scheduling to loading and dispatching to delivery, it is rather complex in implementation -- it’s not just a matter of moving boxes from a warehouse to a customer. In the past this was all done manually, which required ever increasing manpower. And as a business increased in size, the manpower devoted to logistics increased even more.

Today, Cheetah’s automated scheduling and route optimization restructures your client’s manual methods into an always up-to-the-minute centralized electronic scheduling board easily accessible by all personnel that need to know what is going on. This is easily updated by dispatchers or routing personnel when routes or delivery events change. Cheetah’s automated system goes to work immediately, working out scheduling route sequencing for pickups and deliveries. Drivers, dispatchers and CSRs know exactlywhen the materials will be delivered.

You may not be running a military operation, but you will appreciate the efficiency and productivity of Cheetah Logistics Software. The movement of cargo, especially with Just-in-Time delivery standards, is as precise a procedure as any military maneuver. The war zone is the client’s manufacturing area, where they have precisely determined when parts will be needed. It’s a war on time, on distance, on the idiosyncrasies of the road and, most of all, a war on nerves. Here you have your customers calling for ETAs, CSRs doing their best to find out when the deliveries will finally get there, dispatchers pulling out their hair and drivers seemingly always stuck in traffic.

Cheetah has the only logistics system available today that simultaneously offers real-time routing, dispatch, delivery, and pickup information to dispatchers, drivers, CSRs, shippers and customers. Moreover, Cheetah is affordable and provides these unique features and capabilities, all performed automatically in real-time. Real-time means shipments have accurate up-to-the-minute information. Cheetah logistics is interactive, alerting your clients with any changes or status of delivery. In this way your clients always know where their trucks are, what they have delivered or picked up - all performed with the best possible routing.

Logistics can be a nightmare, but not with field- proven Cheetah. Cheetah’s logistics can help make your operation run smoothly and provide room for expansion.

Word: News from Cheetah Marketing & Sales

Are you familiar with how subscription software works and how it can be of benefit to you? Cheetah is offering along with its standard product line -- SaaS (Software as a Solution) which means you access your software through the Internet. We have written extensively about this in previous issues, but I wanted to give you the lowdown strictly from a dollars and sense viewpoint. So this is SaaS up close and personal 5 reasons to switch to Cheetah SaaS now:

We host the software on our servers so there is no cost to you of additional hardware and we handle all installation, maintenance and upgrades.
Expansion is easy, you just add another seat again no additional hardware costs.
Cheetah handles technical support and backup of your files.

Because we own the software and data center servers that run the application, you benefit from our top grade personnel and hardware. The Cheetah SaaS network is run at highest performance levels obtainable. We continuously maintain and upgrade the system to keep it running at optimal levels, always!

Cheetah has made our incredible logistics/communications package accessible and affordable, rather than having you lay out huge upfront costs and licensing fees.

Product Lines: Real-Time Dynamic Routing

One of the most important aspects of Cheetah logistical software is its real-time capabilities. Real- time dynamic routing allows a user to schedule an "on demand" (not previously scheduled) pickup by simply entering in the customer and product information (size and weight) into the Order Entry System. It then gets integrated into the Cheetah system.

In order to accomplish these logistics simply and efficiently, the Cheetah system takes into consideration literally hundreds of business rules. Similarly, if Cheetah recognizes that a delivery is going to be late, the Customer Service Representative is automatically notified so they can call the customer. And should a customer cancel a pick up or delivery, the driver is automatically informed, the remaining stops are automatically rerouted and ETAs are updated.

Onboard: Spotlighting a New Cheetah Client

Benton Express

When you think of family owned business, mom and pop often come to mind. Well I am here to tell you that Benton Express is not your daddy’s idea of family owned business. In fact, the history of Benton Express is an integral part of the history of the transportation industry itself. Brothers Lex and B.D. Benton started the company in 1934 with their opening of a gas station and barbecue (probably would have been one of the world’s best truck stops had they not decided to go into the trucking business themselves.) Initially, they were transporting movie film reels from Atlanta to South Georgia by truck, emphasizing customer service.

This same emphasis on service exists today through 3 generations at Benton, which brings us right to Cheetah’s newly appreciated relationship with them. For 18 months they sorted through and evaluated every manner of system automation pursuing more than 20 different ideas, notions and software to take them from a white pad of paper (as Benton Director of Information Technologies Mark Headrick tells it) to the efficiency and speed of the Cheetah system. In this two-part article Mark tells what that process was like and how Cheetah just fit the bill. You can read more about Benton if you are interested at their web site: www.bentonexpress.com.

Benton has 25 terminals throughout the Southeast including Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee and Alabama. More than 300 trucks ride those roads every day and Benton wanting to continue their service based reputation knew that they had to enter the 21st Century with the tools to do just that. One of the company’s initial moves was to bring in Mark Headrick as Director of Information Technology. Mark has strong IT skills but also experience in both the transportation and food industry which made him an excellent choice to not only evaluate the systems they were investigating but also integrate them throughout the Benton transportation territory. The sheer volume of terminals and drivers to bring online was daunting and certain criteria had to be met to measure up to the Benton standards.

Wouldn’t you know it? A company that built itself on customer service and hard work picked Cheetah because of their customer service. They met with every facet of the company from company founder Bobby Darroll on down. And as Mark so graciously put it, there were three key factors: “functionality, cost and personnel” that sold them on Cheetah along with the “promise of service.” Headrick proudly declared that he has received the “best pre and post sales service” that he has ever encountered and that he works with the “best service rep in the industry.”