Back-office automation platform HubTran has announced a partnership with Freight Management Systems (FMS). FMS customers can now easily automate back-office processes that concern documentation.
HubTran’s platform leverages optical character recognition (OCR), artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) technologies to simplify accounting and back-office processes, resulting in a drastic reduction in operating costs and maximum cash flow.
Back-office documentation has traditionally remained a manual process, making it inefficient and also prone to errors. By automating this process, HubTran can reduce the time back-offices spend in processing invoices and managing documents by over 80% – and at much improved and consistent accuracy.
Incoming documents will now be automatically scanned, categorized, grouped and audited by the HubTran platform, which will then be assigned directly to the correct load on FMS’ LOADPlus Pro software.
FMS President Henry Sheldon told FreightWaves that the partnership with HubTran came about after getting several requests from customers to integrate with HubTran’s back-office automation platform.
“With HubTran and FMS both having cloud-based products and complementary work flows, we quickly saw why customers wanted the products to work together,” said Sheldon. “Our customers had a pain-point when it came to manually assigning documents and matching document information to the transportation management system data, and HubTran’s cloud-based software was the solution.”
Matt Bernstein, the CEO of HubTran, mirrored Sheldon’s sentiments, explaining that HubTran received numerous inquiries about HubTran from brokers using FMS LOADPlus Pro. Bernstein contended that regardless of the number of requests that flow in for transportation management system partnerships, the HubTran would have to be selective on who it partners.
“Our transportation management system partners must have a solid customer base and be forward-looking from a technology perspective. Henry and his team at FMS check those boxes – they’re adding a lot of brokers and are working to make their cloud-based transportation management system increasingly comprehensive,” said Bernstein.
FMS customers have had very positive experiences, with Sheldon mentioning that clients were “amazed with the deeply coupled integration.” Customers became more efficient from day one, using the integration with little ramp-up time. Sheldon cited a customer who saw an 88% increase in weekly efficiency, as processing documents such as PODs, carrier invoices and signed rate agreements became automated.
“It is increasingly critical for transportation companies to take out cost, improve accuracy, and serve their customers and carriers. Whether you have one back-office person or a large team, old school data entry, emailing and manual auditing doesn’t get the job done anymore. The back office is a big hidden cost for brokers – once LOADPlus customers start using HubTran they see how easy it is to take out cost and reallocate energy to growth and carrier relations,” said Bernstein.
Bernstein added that while some third-party logistics providers were hurting due to the COVID-19 crisis and a few have put new initiatives on hold, HubTran continues to add customers, including FMS brokers. This is because with HubTran, users can make their business leaner and more efficient, even in the work from home setting that has become a reality over the last month.
“HubTran makes it easy, even now, to make the transition. The system delivers value on day one, and it’s incredibly easy to start up, get trained and get productive,” said Bernstein. “Even prior to this crisis, we did most of our training via Zoom. And our contracts are 100% transactional with no start-up costs, no minimums, no term – strictly pay as you go.”