Rocky's Own Transport
National logistics company, Rocky’s Own Transport, upgraded their manual delivery management process with our enterprise mobile scanning and printing solution, leading to increased traceability, plus reductions in delivery times and manual delivery and inventory errors.
The Challenge
When you’re a national logistics provider delivering goods across the length and breadth of Australia for the past 35 years, then tracing the delivery of those goods is vital to your business and to your customers.
From its humble beginnings in 1985 providing general and express freight services, Rocky’s Own Transport has grown to become a truly national logistics company with depots in Rockhampton, Wacol, Helidon, Yarwun and Kalgoorlie in Western Australia that house more than 230 staff, 117 trucks and 180 trailers.
While the business has grown significantly and the organisation now has the capabilities to efficiently handle the biggest, most challenging logistics projects in Australia, Rocky’s Own Transport still puts emphasis on its small business customer-focused culture. This includes recognising that their staff are their greatest asset, so they place high priority on staff safety and on maintaining open and honest relationships with their people, and with their customers.
For Rocky’s Own Transport, it was becoming increasingly difficult to provide their high levels of service thanks to outdated delivery processes. Their inventory management and traceability process were completely manual, and they had to wait until their drivers returned to base before sending delivery receipts to their customers who were now requesting greater traceability of deliveries.
The current process not only lacked traceability of the product through the supply chain, but it put them at risk of making inventory mistakes, which would have a large impact on the business. Manual errors could be made, such as paperwork being lost or inaccuracies appearing in the data, and lower productivity and inefficiency would result. Implementation of new delivery tracking software was the pressing solution to this problem.
The Solution
With the new delivery software solution, drivers could now scan the labels and record relevant actions in the software, as well as print a receipt once the goods were delivered. However, issues remained. Rocky’s Own Transport needed a critical hardware component to fulfil the new delivery requirement, but they had no knowledge of what was needed.
Their main aim was to have better visibility of deliveries, but they also wanted to minimise delivery errors, such as short deliveries or missing goods, and generally improve delivery times and traceability (both internally and externally) of the freight.
insignia helped them upgrade their manual delivery management process through the implementation of latest generation enterprise mobile devices. In helping Rocky’s Own Transport, insignia automated the manual delivery management process with the Zebra TC56 Mobile Computer and ZQ520 Mobile Thermal Receipt Printer.
The Zebra TC56 is a rugged mobile touch screen computer with the look and feel of a consumer-style smart phone. It works on an Android Operating System platform – an industry-leading OS offering improved productivity and security for enterprise use.
The Zebra ZQ520 mobile thermal printer has a rugged design, which prevents against breakages, drops and collisions, while it also has an IP54-rating making it resistant to dust and liquids present in warehouse and logistics environments.
Both devices come with vehicle mounting kits and vehicle chargers, and the solution provided by insignia allowed for one TC56 mobile computer mounted on the dashboard of each delivery truck and one ZQ520 mobile printer mounted on the windscreen via a suction cup. Both devices can be charged via the inbuilt vehicle cigarette lighter to provide longer-lasting performance.
The Results
In recommending the solution to Rocky’s Own Transport, insignia leveraged the collective talent of its knowledgeable team to listen to what the customer wanted and recommend technology that would be straightforward to integrate and pair. Once the equipment was received by the customer, insignia then helped with the assembly and mounting of the kits within the delivery vehicles.
For Rocky’s Own Transport, their primary goal was to see an improvement in the traceability of their delivery process, as per their own customers’ requirements. With the new real-time monitoring system, they are now able to track the delivery status (e.g. when it was picked up, when it was delivered and the in-between stages of the journey) plus print the delivery dockets on-site.
A key concern for Rocky’s Own Transport was that manually entering data into a spreadsheet or tracking stock using pen and paper significantly increased the risk of inventory and delivery mistakes, while also keeping delivery times at a slower rate. In the short-term, the insignia solution has resulted in a reduction in errors (e.g. short deliveries and missing goods) and has led to more accurate stock-keeping and faster delivery times.
Rocky’s Own Transport appreciated the knowledge of insignia’s team in understanding their needs and finding a suitable solution for them. They also appreciated the support provided to help set up the devices and they now see insignia as a trusted supplier – someone they will continue doing business with through the purchase of consumables and additional devices as required.
