Even though home offices aren’t something new to Matrix Inc , other companies found the pandemic to be the impetus for their employees to remote work. Many of them started to credit technology for the smooth and efficient transition to working from home, while setting up businesses for long-term return on investment.
General videoconferencing applications — such as Skype, Zoom and Microsoft Teams — experienced a widespread popularity boom during the pandemic. in addition to making them more comfortable working from home, back-office employees can easily keep in contact and on the same page with other coworkers.
The Role of Dispatch Systems and dispatch Software
Better realizing the benefits of an existing TMS or dispatch system has emerged as a common theme this year. Some companies like Sunset Transportation and Paper Transport, were looking forward to implementing the capacity-matching platform.
“It’s been a blessing for us to work with that platform in the remote environment,” said Mick McGrory, vice president of strategic account management at the St. Louis-based 3PL.
“When COVID hit, [we realized] we have this wonderful tool and we’re going to start using it to produce the return [on investment] we hoped it would have,” McGrory said.
Setting Up Home offices
Matrix Trucks have the privilege to have professionally set up home offices overseas.We felt prepared when the coronavirus hit, because each of Bulgarian employees essentially was working remotely in their offices while their individual servers resided at parent company in Hoffman Estates, IL.Being several moves ahead is Ivelina Atanasova’s (company owner) second nature and this time wasn’t an exclusion.
But this is not exactly the case with the other companies.
Achieving time efficiency can be challenging due to the frequent disparities between workplace equipment and what employees have at home, Sunset’s McGrory said.
“When you’re at home, you’re not in [the] office and don’t have six phone lines coming in. You’re not running through the highest-speed internet cable,” he said.
There are security risks of letting employees use their own equipment that businesses have already quickly weighed. Those risks are versus supplying each one with company-approved equipment , which proves costly. Meanwhile, electronic devices were harder to be found in the pandemic when many industries suddenly started to set up home offices.
Once employees are ready to work from home with the right equipment and network, trucking technology platforms can improve their workflow. Transactions can occur from anywhere and at any time due to a software that allows it without having access to files or data at the office.
“Those traditional back-end processes are web or mobile enabled and … a biller can work at home or anywhere — they can do their job really well from their kitchen table,” said Larry Kerr, CEO of EBE Technologies. The technology vendor has released a new application centered on easing billing and rate confirmations.
Carrier Portal
Automation improves businesses’ functionality and gives them an edge over competitors. With this said, another thing that Matrix is ahead of the others with, is enabling a carrier portal. It automatically shares available capacity with a few clicks. Customers also are asking for the use of faster, more responsive technologies to track their own freight. We’ve thought about this as well. All you have to do is : Go to Matrixtrucks.com and then choose whether you need to track a shipment or you need available trucks capacity.
For the other companies , Covid-19 was the main catalyst that helped them come up with this idea:
“There’s been an increase in interest in optimization products: How do we do the most efficient thing given the current resources?” said Chris Orban, Trimble’s vice president of data science. “As the pandemic arrived, it really forced this shift in how we measure productivity remotely and give people the right tools to do their job.”
“They’re not wasting time and going through multiple channels trying to get the right people,” Sunset’s McGrory said. “What it means to [employees] is efficiency from home … Our usage of that tool has grown dramatically since the pandemic occurred.”
Transportation businesses increasingly are using digital systems to automate repetitive processes and free up employees for other work. That’s boosting efficiency during the pandemic and will continue to add value when the situation normalizes, industry sources said.
You can visit our instagram page and see a part of our home office team !
While other businesses are still adjusting to the new working environment, we are striving for new features development. We are rapidly adjusting to the new normal , supporting a remote workforce.
Matrix Trucks is a proof of always finding a way to work with pleasure and efficiency , even in difficult times such as Covid-19 pandemic!