Service flexibility – an important tool in uncertain times

by Kathy Ross on 2012-01-25 00:48:17

In the modern business world companies are increasingly learning new ways to adapt and do business in ways they may never have considered before; This is especially true for those in a competition saturated market – not to mention managing the effects of unexpected disasters and financial crises.

One of iCOS LIVE's goals has always been to help small businesses stay in business by giving them access to tools, technologies, and service that once upon a time may only have been accessible to industry heavyweights with resources to sink into expensive investments and risks.

In order to be able to do this, we have redesigned our technologies and company culture allowing us great flexibility in the services we can offer;

Whilst iCOS LIVE from the outside can be experienced as a single cohesive application providing tools for managing the entire transport management process, the reality is that the technologies behind this have been designed as a two-tier architecture – with modular 'services', like lego blocks, being made available that together form the experience of using iCOS LIVE.

This setup allows iCOS LIVE solution providers to put iCOS LIVE together in new, and sometimes unanticipated ways in response to helping our customers find the best way to enable them to do business in new ways.

An example of this is the recently announced iCOS LIVE Agent Link – tailored to allow forwarding agents and subcontractors to work closely together, allowing agents to pick and choose which consignments are allocated to each subcontractor - who in turn can further manage which of those consignments are allocated to each of their vehicles or other subcontractors.



Agent Link uses LIVE LINK technology to enable instant transmission of changes between companies with this setup. After a dispatcher from the forwarder selects which subcontractor a consignment is to be moved by, the status of that consignment becomes locked from being moved manually by him.

On the flip side, at the same time the subcontractor sees a new booking appear on his dispatch workbench – the freight payer being the forwarder who forwarded it.

A key point here is that whilst the subcontractor can see this job, he is prevented from seeing any information which the forwarder does not want him to have access to – but is still able to use iCOS LIVE dispatch to further allocate that job to vehicles. That is, the logical separation you would see to expect between two separate organisations.

As his drivers use their phones to move the consignments through the uplift and offload, both dispatchers at the subcontractor and forwarder see the status of their consignments move accordingly. When the subcontractor delivers the consignment from his point of view, the job is complete and changes to deliver. Meanwhile on the forwarders dispatch screen, the job changes to offloaded and is unlocked and ready for allocation to the next leg. If it was the last leg before the consignee, both systems have access to the signee name and signature captured by the subcontractors drivers using iCOS LIVE GO.

This system can 'stack' as many times, between as many companies is necessary, all linked together in perfect step. For instance a job may take the route from forwarder → subcontractor → subcontractor → subcontractor → consignee.

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