Business process management (BPM) is a key focus for any company seeking to grow through mergers and acquisitions. Cordys, a leader of BPM software whose mission is to improve customers' business operations with world-class, process oriented software, recently helped U.S. Xpress, a premier transportation company in North America who is constantly seeking ways to increase its efficiency in operations and ensure bottom line corporate success.
According to a recent Cordys case study, the company was facing the challenges presented by acquiring several other companies and bringing together disparate IT systems which would remain on their own transportation management system (TMS).
The challenges facing U.S. Xpress represented a potential BPM software nightmare if the company could not introduce attention on the value chain. Fortunately, the company had a two-fold goal: to gain better exposure of all orders being submitted and processes by U.S. Xpress affiliated entities, and to gain maximum efficiency in order processing and pricing by allowing each trucking entity within the U.S. Xpress umbrella to bid for each other’s orders.
U.S. Xpress was also trying to effectively manage a driving motivation for future growth through additional mergers and acquisitions, putting increased pressure on any BPM software solution to meet the needs to support current trucking entities and facilitate future expansion. The chosen solution also had to lower the total cost of ownership and be developed on a platform that could support rapid deployment.
To meet its BPM software needs, U.S. Xpress turned to Cordys. Now, depending on the nature of the orders and the availability of the necessary equipment, any trucking entity under the U.S. Xpress umbrella is able to accept one or more exposed orders or counter-bid an offer. And, with this BPM software now in place, U.S. Xpress can now track accepted orders and orders declined and the number of orders at various states within the order process.
A set of dynamic business rules has also been put in place by U.S. Xpress, and the company elected to implement the Cordys Business Operations Platform (BOP) to design a seamless and scalable solution that offered a process-centric, loosely-coupled layered architecture. The implementation of the top-down BPM-centric development approach was completed within 90 days and now the company is able to greatly reduce the average order processing time as trucking entities have a single view of the exposed orders in real-time.
“Cordys provides us with the opportunity to overcome our challenges with intersystem integration, onboarding new acquisitions, billing and payroll – and will give us a higher consolidated view both financially and operationally,” shared Steven Cleary, CIO U.S. Xpress.
As a result of this BPM software, U.S. Xpress realized significant benefits, including real-time view into exposed orders, visibility and monitoring of orders with clear data, automation of processes, long term cost reduction, and a web-based user interface that ensured connectivity for remote operations and escalation for close monitoring of orders.
Susan J. Campbell is a contributing editor for TMCnet and has also written for eastbiz.com. To read more of Susan’s articles, please visit her columnist page.Edited by Carrie Schmelkin