Kirk Serjeantson, chief information officer with American Expediting, and Arthur Axelrad, chief executive officer and co-founder of Dispatch Science, relate how the shipper consolidated multiple transportation management systems.
American Expediting is a provider of final-mile logistics for the healthcare industry in the U.S. and Canada, delivering such items as organs, transplants and life-saving medications. “Our mission statement is ‘improving lives one critical shipment at a time,’ Serjeantson says, “and it takes strong technology to govern that experience.”
Thanks to decades of operating with legacy systems from multiple acquisitions, the company found itself saddled with seven different transportation management systems (TMS) across its platform. Those applications were managed in various ways, couldn’t “talk” to one another, and were frustrating the company’s efforts at achieving uniformity of operations.
American Expediting turned to Dispatch Science to consolidate those multiple systems into one. Axelrad says the vendor had already developed expertise in serving the healthcare sector through working with numerous transportation companies. The contract with American Expediting, however, was a “crowning achievement.”
Implementation was “a significant job,” Serjeantson says. Dispatch Science worked closely with American Expediting to install the consolidated system at the first few locations, providing crucial analysis and training. After that, American Expediting was able to complete the initiative at the remainder of its facilities by itself. The vendor supplied “great project management and partnership as well, teaching us how to do things properly and making it better on every implementation,” Serjeantson says, adding that the new TMS “is our backbone.”
The initiative yielded multiple benefits, including significant savings on software licensing through adoption of a single application.
The automation initiative continues. “We are mid-digital transformation,” Serjeantson says. “There’s a lot more work to do.”
