SUPPLY CHAIN

PROBLEM

When AccuShip wanted to significantly grow its business, the company's leadership realized that it needed to automate the proven shipment auditing processes that it had been using for years and build a web-based application that would streamline its interaction with customers. AccuShip was already providing shipment auditing services to companies sending a large volume of packages via FedEx, UPS, etc. AccuShip could find at least 10% of savings for its customers by pinpointing when the carriers failed to meet their commitments, e.g. when packages were delivered late. Now, AccuShip wanted to build a system that would automate as many of its processes as possible. In order to be effective, the system would have to be easy to use, preserve strict data integrity, include the complex auditing calculations demanded by the business, provide better reporting, and integrate data streams from a variety of sources including EDI, ASCII, XML, spreadsheet, and manual entry. Each data feed would be coming in a different format depending on which shipper and/or customer it applied to.

SOLUTION

N-Cycles delivered STAR, a system that automatically captures the various data feeds on shipping activity, analyzes and audits the records for over-charges, automatically prepared charges dispute information for easy transmission to shippers, and provides comprehensive reporting through the AccuShip website. Now customers receive even more accurate shipment auditing and reporting faster than ever before and AccuShip can concentrate more of its resources on attracting new customers.

N-Cycles worked with AccuShip to analyze its existing processes, design a flexible and scalable application architecture based on Oracle databases, build the system, and expand it as the business needs evolved. Notable technical aspects include the standard Data Access Layer which forces all database transactions to be validated through a standard series of business rules, a flexible standard Common Mapping Layer to provide a consistent translation from all of the various coding schemes used by the different shippers and customers, and a consistent and easy to use web front end. By using N-Cycles AppOnTap toolbox, AccuShip can also regenerate a large part of its application without re-writing code when business needs change.

RESULTS

AccuShip can now process every audit with significantly less human involvement with has improved the profitability of each client as well as delivering better and more predictable service. The additional information available at the website has also increased client satisfaction by providing better information about the AccuShip service and status of every engagement.