After working in logistics and transportation for nearly a decade, I’ve learned several ways companies can save time and money with simple solutions. Learn how carrier onboarding, office product ordering and more can help your company.
Use Amazon for Business Supplies
Launched just a year ago, Amazon is our go-to source for affordable office products. After a $99 Amazon Prime membership, you can order any of your office supplies with free two-day shipping. That includes furniture, printers, paper and more.
Even handier is their “Recurring Delivery” program that allows you to set a schedule for items to be shipped to your front door without ever having to login. We use this free service on items like reams of paper and break-room supplies where we have a good idea of our usage patterns.
Amazon Business also has the ability to run spend reports, classify purchases per department and manage multiple users who can order their own supplies at a moment’s notice.
Get a Water Cooler over Water Bottles
We work in transportation so we should all be conscious of our environmental footprint. And one of the biggest culprits of waste in an office are employees who snag a bottle of water over a refillable cup.
Save the water bottles for your important guests and for the employees, opt for water service from a local company.
Here in Jacksonville, we use Culligan for our water filtration service. Because we opted for bottle-free water service, the cooler unit hooks right into our water line and allows us the capability to drink fresh, filtered water in either hot or cold temperatures at the touch of a button.
Finding bottle or bottle-free service in your area is a simple as a Google search and will run you around $15 per month.
Use Recycled Toner Cartridges Instead of Name Brand
I’ve seen it a million times. Your office product company sells you on a new HP Toner Cartridge because you’ll get a $25 gift card when you buy three at one time.
Trouble is when you print as much as we do in this industry, a $25 gift card once a year for spending thousands on toner cartridges is hardly worth it.
Instead, ignore the sales reps who are trying to get kick backs and opt for recycled toner. It works exactly the same as OEM’s (which stands for ‘Original Electronic Manufacturer’) and will allow you to save nearly half off your toner purchases EVERY SINGLE TIME.
Worried about recycled cartridges not functioning in your printer? 99 percent of printers can’t tell the difference no matter how many times your office product sales rep tries to ‘warn’ you.Remember, they want their kicks backs, too.
In the past, I’ve used Cartridge World for recycle toner purchases. I could place an order online and the rep would be at our office the next day with the order and picked up all the empties. The empty cartridges are used in the future or recycled to save good ol’ Mother Earth.
After a few months of using the recycled toner cartridges, you can print out your order history, estimate the cost savings and show it to your boss for a bunch of brownie points. Or as evidence you deserve a raise—which is what we all want, right?!
Use Google instead of Microsoft
The majority of transportation companies use Microsoft over Google and I have no clue why.
Gmail is infinitely better than Outlook. It’s cheaper, more user friendly, has access to slick mobile tools along with 5GB of free cloud storage.
A Google App email (an email with your company’s domain instead of Gmail) will run you $5 per user while a basic Gmail is free. But both will give you access to Google Drive which has a complete office suite FOR FREE and completely compatible with Microsoft Office.
Plus, with Google Drive you have the ability to work off cloud-based collaborative documents. That means when someone updates a shared spreadsheet, all you send is a link to the document. No saving, resaving, resharing or any other nonsense that can waste your time every day.
Move Your Company Contracts Online
Companies waste an average of $271 billion dollars annually on managing documents.And the biggest offender is in the transportation industry where we lose an estimated 20 percent of our team’s time simply by chasing down signatures for contracts.
Think about how many departments are affected by carrier contracts, credit and driver applications. ALL OF THEM.
These contracts are essential for business but if you tried to get your TMS to install these services for you, be prepared for sticker shock! On average, a TMS will charge you thousands of dollars per month just for online contracts. And that doesn’t even include the $15,000+ setup fee.
By going through a company like GuysGirl Media, they can place your contracts/applications online at an affordable price point and your customers fill them out, sign and date—all electronically. It’s legal, secure and mobile optimized. You also save a significant amount of time by not chasing down faxes, incomplete contracts and you own all of your information.
Final Thoughts
The transportation industry is famously slow to adopt new techniques but with these simple adjustments, you can save your company a lot of time and a hell of a lot of money.
If you’re interested in hearing more about how your company become more efficient, check out more logistics marketing services from GuysGirl Media.
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