Advanced Delivery System Benefits from InterGis Automation

(TORRINGTON, CT) Advanced Delivery Systems (ADS) provides home delivery and set-up operations for Boston Home Interiors – a 4-store furniture retailer operating in the Boston metro area, but providing home delivery to 3 states: Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Rhode Island. For many years, ADS would simply receive a carbon copy of customer orders, then fill trucks with orders and plan routes manually. The scheduling process alone would take 2-3 hours a day. Routes were planned by town only, without regard to customer locations within each town, meaning that most routes were inefficient – wasting time and transportation costs. Drivers were expected to find addresses on their own, with only the aid of often-outdated paper maps. Today, those manual processes have been replaced with Visual Control Room (VCR), an automated routing, scheduling, dispatching and customer notification system from InterGis.

The entire process at ADS is now automated. Boston Home Interiors (BHI) no longer sends paper copies of customer orders. First, an electronic link between BHI and ADS was established. BHI's corporate order processing system captures customer orders and delivery information. At 5pm each night, that data is collected from the 4 stores and downloaded automatically into the InterGis VCR system. Within minutes, ADS is reviewing the next day's automated routed deliveries, including complete schedules and routes, as well as printed load instructions. Drivers receive their own copy of printed route manifests along with color maps and turn-by-turn driving directions. The same data is simultaneously uploaded to BHI, providing the management and customer service teams with all of the details about the service their customers will receive from ADS.

Company president Steve Brown says, "InterGis systems work extremely well in the home delivery marketplace and provide companies with huge savings in time and transportation costs while providing new levels of customer service not readily available in the past. We're pleased to have ADS and their associated companies as our customers."

InterGis developed Visual Control Room as well as other complimentary systems for automating many tasks associated with transportation, distribution, and service related operations. Visual Control Room is the only true multi-user automated routing, scheduling, dispatching, vehicle optimization and territory planning system for distribution and transportation operations. By optimizing routes, schedules, vehicle and driver availability, companies substantially reduce costs and time associated with these tasks and can save up to 25% or more on their transportation costs. InterGis also offers a product called QuickGPS, WirelessRoute, ErrivalTime, and TerritoryDesigner – GPS tracking, PDA Handheld applications, automated Customer Notification capabilities that keeps everyone in touch with what's happening with all activities, and Territory planning and management. InterGis also offers RouteScript, a simple but powerful macro language, that allows easy customization and user definable functions to be quickly created to handle any special task. InterGis products are extremely simple to use and can be deployed on individual workstations, multi-user server-based environments or via the Web. InterGis is a privately held firm located in Torrington, CT. For more information, contact InterGis at 860-496-4900, P.O. Box 899, Torrington, CT 06790.