Electronic Access Pushes Paper Routing Guide Into Obsolescence
 

Bohemia, NY – This season, when traffic managers print and mail the updated revisions of their routing guide, they may be looking at the last days of an obsolete technology. The Internet has now made it possible to transform the complex routing guide into a dynamic time and cost saving tool while saving a few trees in the process.

A new technology, which can be accessed through the web at www.routingguides.com, improves and speeds up communications between shippers, carriers, and consignees. Users are able to post and manage routing and vendor compliance manuals on the web with immediate communications to vendors. The technology also enables companies to replace slow-moving paper documents with electronic Advance Shipment Notifications, Bills of Lading, tracing, tracking and other reports.

Routing guides are a primary transportation management tool. They enable shippers to ensure that their vendors and customers are using the carriers, rates and services that they negotiated. They also enable shippers to maintain a manageable number of delivering carriers to maximize efficiencies of the freight receiving process. However, more than any other supply chain tool, the War and Peace –sized printed routing manuals are universally considered a headache by shippers who have to update, print, and distribute them, and by vendors who have to comply with their complicated instructions.

RoutingGuides.com enables shippers to simplify this entire process and concurrently leverage all shipment volumes to drive down transportation costs. It identifies a shippers choice of carriers to be used for shipments of merchandise varying in weight and service, and it identifies all shipping, packing, marking, and communications requirements as well. RoutingGuides.com also provides transit times, delivery requests and links between shipping and inventory.

"Implementation opens a door to a world of valuable information," said Alan Miller, President of RoutingGuides.com. "Shippers can access information at any point along the route, and carriers, customers and vendors access as needed a secure, clear, user-friendly inquiry screen that enables them to easily obtain correct route assignments, corresponding rules, conditions, and exceptions."

"And compliance is easily monitored," added Miller. "Shippers finally can gain control of all decisions that affect the way products are delivered. Updating is immediate, access by carriers, customers and vendors is immediate, and notification of compliance is immediate. All at a fraction of the cost necessary to maintain the obsolete paper routing guide."