Grow 30% without adding Staff

Sprinter Trucking of Winston, Oregon has done just that, by implementing the complete Prophesy DispatchSeries Software solution to manage their growing trucking operation.

“TrackerDispatch has greatly enhanced our ability to track loads & trucks”, said Cola Tsarnas, General Manager. “Because of Prophesy we were able to increase our fleet by over 30% with the same amount of administrative staff.”

Several years ago, the team at Sprinter found their operation growing, and decided that an overall fleet management solution would be needed to manage their growth and maintain the same level of quality that their customers had come to expect.

In December 2003, Sprinter Trucking implemented Prophesy DispatchSeries software with QuickBooks Pro^® interface to handle their total fleet operations. “After having a positive first experience with Prophesy, the integrated Dispatch system seemed like a smart choice for our company,” said Cola Tsarnas, General Manager. “After researching other solutions out there we were pleasantly surprised to learn that no competing solutions offered the reliability, power and features that Prophesy has, at such an affordable price.”

In 2004, Sprinter added even more robust database capabilities by adding our SQL interface, and in 2005 added complete integrated truck & trailer tracking capabilities by adding Prophesy TrackerDispatch to document the movements of 100 trucks.

“TrackerDispatch has served as an excellent way of distributing our load information to our drivers,” said Tsarnas. “It has helped us to reduce phone calls and greatly reduced errors between dispatcher and driver.”

In the years since the company has continued to grow, adding nearly 25 additional power units, while maintaining the same core office team, and of course their Prophesy DispatchSeries Software in place.

For more information about our industry-leading Prophesy DispatchSeries solution, please contact us at 800.776.6706 or via email at usernews@mile.com.


September 2007 Grow 30% With Same Staff Document Imaging Migrate to MS SQL Server Prophesy Tips & Tricks Speeding Up Your Team	Your Prophesy Software has more to offer than ever before. This issue of the Prophesy User News Bulletin is designed to let you know about new enhancements and breaking product news which will be of interest to you. Please contact your Prophesy Account Manager to learn more at 800.776.6706, or send us an email at usernews@mile.com.
	Grow 30% without adding Staff Sprinter Trucking of Winston, Oregon has done just that, by implementing the complete Prophesy DispatchSeries Software solution to manage their growing trucking operation. “TrackerDispatch has greatly enhanced our ability to track loads & trucks”, said Cola Tsarnas, General Manager. “Because of Prophesy we were able to increase our fleet by over 30% with the same amount of administrative staff.” Several years ago, the team at Sprinter found their operation growing, and decided that an overall fleet management solution would be needed to manage their growth and maintain the same level of quality that their customers had come to expect. In December 2003, Sprinter Trucking implemented Prophesy DispatchSeries software with QuickBooks Pro^® interface to handle their total fleet operations. “After having a positive first experience with Prophesy, the integrated Dispatch system seemed like a smart choice for our company,” said Cola Tsarnas, General Manager. “After researching other solutions out there we were pleasantly surprised to learn that no competing solutions offered the reliability, power and features that Prophesy has, at such an affordable price.” In 2004, Sprinter added even more robust database capabilities by adding our SQL interface, and in 2005 added complete integrated truck & trailer tracking capabilities by adding Prophesy TrackerDispatch to document the movements of 100 trucks. “TrackerDispatch has served as an excellent way of distributing our load information to our drivers,” said Tsarnas. “It has helped us to reduce phone calls and greatly reduced errors between dispatcher and driver.” In the years since the company has continued to grow, adding nearly 25 additional power units, while maintaining the same core office team, and of course their Prophesy DispatchSeries Software in place. For more information about our industry-leading Prophesy DispatchSeries solution, please contact us at 800.776.6706 or via email at usernews@mile.com.
	Customer Service, Office Efficiency, Reach New Levels with Document Imaging “Time is money” is an old and wise expression. If you could cut the labor cost of handling paper by up to 70%, respond to customer document requests 5 times faster, retrieve any document instantly, and eliminate your filing cabinets—what would that be worth to your business? Our new Prophesy Document Imaging solution offers this efficiency, and many of our customers have already implemented it. In fact, over 100 Prophesy Dispatch users have taken advantage of Prophesy Document Imaging, and are pleased with their results. As Cheri Smith of Artur Express, Inc. in St Louis writes: “Prophesy Document Imaging eliminated the need to go to the physical file to check documents. When a customer calls and has a question on an invoice, I can see all the paperwork quickly and easily in one place - and if the customer wants copies, I can email them at the click of a button.” Time savings are noted on the input process as well. Our customers told us that their old way of tracking paperwork involved making copies, organizing into piles, and filing by customer. With Prophesy Document Imaging, our users simply scan the documents, and associate the image with its load in the system. Document Imaging is fast becoming the industry standard to replace filing cabinets for document storage. Just as the photocopier replaced carbon paper and the typewriter replaced the fountain pen, electronic storage and retrieval of documents is already the norm in many industries and freight transportation is catching on fast! Your team will value the time savings and ease of use. Your customers will notice the increased response time. And you will see the benefits of these efficiencies in your bottom line. For a personal demo of Prophesy Document Imaging, please contact us at 800.776.6706 or email usernews@mile.com today.
	Moving from Microsoft Access^® to Microsoft SQL Server^® Most Prophesy Dispatch customers should be using the Microsoft SQL Server based version of our software rather than the Microsoft Access version. If you have a very small operation, have no plans for future growth, and have neither speed nor disk space problems, then Microsoft Access may still be suitable for you. However, if even one of the preceding conditions is not true then you should begin looking at converting to our SQL Server version as soon as possible. Some reasons for making this conversion are outlined below. Speed- SQL is much faster. Some typical timing comparisons from a large database are Active Loads Board time to display down from 32 seconds to 1 second, Previewing a Freight Bill went from 23 seconds to 2 seconds, and Rating Driver’s Pay went down from 15 seconds 1 second, Assigning a Driver down from 46 seconds to 2 seconds in SQL. These examples are just the tip of the iceberg. Note that these response time improvements are solely the result of using SQL Server instead of Microsoft Access. No changes were made to our code or system. Microsoft® Direction- Microsoft appears to be committed to SQL Server not to Microsoft Access. To the best of our knowledge, they continually enhance SQL server and are in a maintenance mode on Microsoft Access. Thus, Microsoft is telling all of us the SQL is the Database system of their future. Reliability and Maintainability- In line with the point above the SQL Server version has much better storage and data handling as well as overall reliability and backup capability and so is the obvious choice if your data is important to you. Flexibility and Futures- You may not be on Vista^® (Microsoft’s new operating system which we still think you should wait on) but sooner or later we will all have to migrate to this environment for one reason or another and this is one more reason to get ready with the SQL Server version. Availability- SQL Server 2005 Express^® is now available in a free version to most of our customers, which makes it easier to migrate. We have the ability to help you make the move. Dispatch Futures- many of our upcoming internal enhancements will only be effective in the SQL Server version since Microsoft Access does not provide the needed capability. Cost- There is a cost for SQL Server upgrade but it produces an almost immediate ROI for any customer using Dispatch. The productivity of all of your staff from Dispatchers to back office personnel will improve immediately. No retraining is needed but virtually all functions will happen much faster as outlined above.
	Prophesy Tips & Tricks! For Prophesy DispatchSeries Software For Prophesy Mileage & Routing Software For Prophesy TaxTally Software For Prophesy DispatchSeries Software Resource Availability View on Dispatch Board: This relatively new view on the BB was designed by Dispatchers for Dispatchers – It shows you the last or current load a driver is assigned to and the next load they are pre-assigned to. If a driver is not pre-assigned to a load use this view to see what drivers need loads! Spit the view on the Dispatch Board - Pending loads on top and the Resource Availability view on the bottom. Drag and drop a driver onto the load you want to assign him to, or simply right click and select "Assign to specific Load" then type in the load number you want to assign the driver to. Keep in mind if you right click you can hide the fields you do not want to see. Ability to export any Dispatch Board View to Excel - Click on File>Preferences>System Defaults>Print to Excel Defaults. Make sure the "Print Board to XLS" has a check mark next to it. Open any view on the Dispatch Board, in the upper right hand corner of the BB view there are now two icons next to the word refresh. Click on the second icon to the right of the word refresh and you will export the dispatch board view to excel. Rating Historical Surcharges - This new rating feature can be used to track and auto apply any type of surcharge, such as Fuel or Insurance. If you update your fuel surcharges on a weekly basis you would simply do the following: Open a rate schedule, click on Historical Surcharges, select the Start date, Select the end date, Select the effective date i.e. pickup date, select fuelsurcharge, select compute based on such as per mile or Rate %, enter surcharge amount. Now when you calculate a rate based on the rate schedule the Historical Charge is associated with the surcharge will automatically be calculated based on the preferences you have set up. For Prophesy Mileage & Routing Software You can zoom into any area of the map by drawing a box around that area. First select any zoom tool on the toolbar, and then click and hold your left mouse button anywhere on the map. Drag the mouse diagonally to draw the box, and let go of the mouse button when the box is the size you want. The map will immediately zoom to the boxed area. To improve performance on slower machines, you can prevent the map from automatically opening at startup. Press F2, click the Map tab, uncheck the box labeled “Automatically Open the Map”, and click OK. Now the map will no longer automatically open when starting the program, however you can still open the map yourself at any time by clicking the Show Map button on the toolbar. You can change the appearance of any route on the map. Select the route from the dropdown box on the toolbar, and its parameters, such as color, transparency, and line width, will appear to the right. Adjust these parameters as desired. Use the Traverse Trip Sheets and Traverse Report Sheets toolbar buttons to quickly cycle through all of the open trips and reports on your screen. For Prophesy TaxTally Software The full TaxTally manual is available on the Help menu. Click Help > Help Index, and the manual will open in a new window. Use the pane at the left to navigate to the section you want to view, or use the Search tab to find any word or phrase in the manual. By default, trips’ beginning odometer readings are not editable. If you need to edit these readings, first close the Fuel Tax Transactions window; then press F2, click the System Defaults tab, and check the “Allow Edit of Start Odometer” box. You can review any state’s tax rate tables and IFTA report options by clicking Maintain > State Tax Rates. Use the Previous, Next, or Locate buttons on the toolbar to navigate to the desired state record. All tax rates and report options are preset according to each state’s requirements, so they should not be changed unless explicitly requested by the state. By default, TaxTally allows you to enter trips with start dates of up to 120 days ago. If you need to enter older trips, press F2, click the System Defaults tab, and adjust the “Allowable Entries…Days Ago” option to accommodate the trips you are entering. For example, enter “365” to allow trips with a start date of up to a full year ago.
	Boost your productivity… Prophesy Wednesday Webinars Continue with “THE NEED FOR SPEED!” Prophesy now offers several new ways to boost your productivity, and to give you even greater efficiencies with the Prophesy Software products you are already using! Our next Webinar series will be “The Need for Speed: Three Ways You Can Build Business Velocity and Supercharge Your System.” When combined, these options will boost your productivity and allow you to generate more revenue with the resources you already have. The Need for Speed Webinar will cover: Prophesy’s new Load Posting Module was designed to eliminate the need for manual posting of empty trucks and uncovered loads to the web. This Webinar will show automatic posting of loads and trucks to web sites such as DAT^TM, Get Loaded^TM, Post Everywhere^TM, and Internet Truckstop^TM. What many don’t realize is un-posting can be just as time consuming as posting, and that ability will be shown, as well as re-posting to sites (such as DAT) that impose time limits. The system also provides centralized status tracking of all posted trucks and loads. Customers tell us the Internet Shipment Tracking Module helps them cut their customer service phone time by 40% or more by allowing them to automatically upload freight status information to the web so their customers can retrieve it for themselves. We will also show how email alerts can be used to automatically notify selected customers when key events such as pickups and deliveries occur. Further, we will cover how to enable your customers to retrieve their own PODs and other docs directly from the web with no direct involvement on your part. Our Microsoft SQL Server^® Upgrade enables your Dispatch system to run a lot faster compared to Microsoft Access^®, and it eliminates the need to do the periodic “compact and repair” routine that Microsoft Access^® requires. SQL is not new, it has been available for several years. But, what is new is SQL Express—the free version that has enough power to satisfy all but the largest Prophesy users. We’ll get into the important details in the session so you can decide if this would be a helpful upgrade for your business. To make sure everyone can take advantage of this series, we are offering several dates and times in September and October. For our current schedule, please visit www.mile.com/events. Also note, as always we are offering special package pricing to all Webinar attendees, just call Quentin Eastman for details at 888.509.5303 or email usernews@mile.com.
	Copyright 2007 Prophesy Transportation Solutions, Inc. All trademarks property of their respective owners