“Without Synergize, my job would definitely take a lot more time. It’s pretty impressive what we do: we manage 5,000 drivers, 13,000 pieces of equipment, over 1,200 locations, and we close 26,000 repair orders per month. It’s a 24/7 process we have here.”
When Warner added to their customer offerings the administration of driver qualifications, it meant that their existing image viewer was not going to be robust enough, or secure enough, to handle sensitive employee documents. Up to 75 different documents may be attached to a single driver qualification file, including license, medical clearance, training record, special permit trainings, driving records, applications, and background checks. Warner needed a way to track that information electronically, view the images in a system robust enough to handle access by 17 different Warner users, and provide secure access through an employee web portal by their customers all over the country.
Their old image viewing software handled repair orders and management of “units” – that is, every one of the 13,000 pieces of equipment under Warner’s care – but was not suitable for the driver qualification files.
Solution
Warner made the move to Synergize so that all unit images, all repair order images, and all driver qualification images can be stored in customizable repositories, linked, and accessible from secure portals.
Synergize is integrated with TMW’s TMT fleet maintenance system which is where Warner’s customers look up vendor documents and unit documents. Upon entering a barcode for a particular document type, Synergize uses the barcode to do a lookup in TMT, pulls the vendor information, the customer name, the unit number and its location, then populates everything into Synergize for easy viewing by Warner’s customer. Warner also acts as the Accounts Payable department for their customers, handling vendor invoice payment on their behalf. Warner bills their customers once per week, then the customer can go into Synergize to view all the documents associated with the invoice.
Synergize provides the secure website portal for access to the sensitive driver qualification documents. Tracking renewal dates for the various qualifications is now handled routinely, and integrated with Warner’s repair and maintenance work.
For documents that arrive via email, the Warner user attaches a bar code with a repair order number and saves the document to a network folder. Because Synergize is integrated with MS-Outlook, that folder is monitored, and files can be pulled and uploaded into Synergize for lookup as required.
Results
Warner always had a policy of scanning documents and putting them into network folders. “We’ve always tried to get documents into some kind of electronic form,” states Kloepfer. “It would be unmanageable if on paper. In the last eight months we have developed a way for the process to be automatic, which is huge for us. When the users save to a folder it is pushed to Synergize immediately so our customers can see it. Now, they’re not waiting 24 hours to see their documents”.
Automatic uploading of images has been a significant time saver for Warner. An added benefit has been observed by their dealership owner: seeing that everything can be stored electronically means the dealership keeps giving them more and more material to store. Because of the ease of uploading to Synergize, storage only keeps growing.
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