01/12/2009
The Woods Group Makes Immediate Savings and Offers Better Service with Translogix Sapphire TMS
Sydney 01 December 2009
Leading Australian transport and logistics solutions provider,
TransLogix, has announced that its Sapphire Transport Management
Suite has been chosen by The Woods Group to streamline operations
and consolidate growth.
The Woods Group is an Australian, family-owned, diversified grain,
seeds and stockfeed agribusiness. Its growing, marketing, milling
and transport businesses are run separately but are all linked by
common management and strategic goals. Woods Transport operates 25
trucks with a team of employed drivers as well as subcontractors
for carting bulk grain and containerised freight. Its three key
sites, at Port of Brisbane, Toowoomba and Goondiwindi, operate 24
hours per day.
Andrew Woods, Director of The Woods Group and Managing Director of
Woods Transport, said: "As our business has expanded, particularly
over the past 12 months, we saw the need for a system which will
allow us to consolidate that growth and pick up new clients through
the provision of better service."
The Woods Group was using multiple operational and accounting
software applications and recognised the benefits of managing the
different elements of its transport business with one flexible and
user-friendly software program.
Woods Transport needed a complete logistics solution to efficiently
automate its operations from on-farm pickups into storage, to
delivery of finished product to overseas terminals, as well as
being able to offer competitive pricing and timely service.
"After considerable analysis of what was available in the market,
we selected the Translogix Sapphire Transport Management System
(TMS) to streamline our processes. We needed operational fluency
and full integration with our accounting requirements," Woods
said.
70 percent of Woods Transport's current business is with internal
Woods Grain customers. "The information produced by the new
Sapphire system is now correct and transparent across the whole
farming and packing operations through to what is visible to the
grain trading business," he said.
The business now has greatly improved productivity, accuracy and
speed with the real-time system. Woods explained: "When we prepare
vehicle operational instructions, we now enter all the details only
once and they can be followed through from truck allocation to
invoicing and the generation of a subcontractor's pay. Under our
old multiple programs we'd have to do the same entry up to three
times.
"The time saved equals the equivalent of one administrative job -
that's $60,000 we saved straight off the bat," he said.
Typical of the extremely complex operations of Australia's SME
logistics companies, Woods Transport runs Higher Mass Limit A, B
Triple Road Trains under IAP into their Toowoomba hub where they
change to B-Doubles or Single Trailers into the wharf.
Woods Transport will be using TransLogix Container Validation,
1-Stop Interface to provide visibility across the business of
container arrivals, delays and releases to improve customer service
and reduce costs.
Each container can now be tracked against a single release number
from when it leaves the container park and produce one accurate
invoice per release number.
Anselm Waterfield, CEO of TransLogix, said: "We are delighted to
have the Woods Group onboard - they're a great example of the
current shift in the Australian logistics industry. They have
recognised the need to be able to compete on more than just price
and that using the latest technology is the best way to improve
their customer service offerings and their productivity. The
TransLogix software solution will provide the platform to secure
this strategy and grow their business."
As Woods Transport can now better track and utilise its existing
equipment and capture all costs for all invoices and understand the
real cost of moving containers, Woods can now "maintain a decent
rate for our work".
Andrew Woods made a strategic choice to commit to hands-on training
from the TransLogix people who use the system all the time and know
how to apply it to Woods Transport's real world operational
conditions. "Rather than us clumsily going through the manual
ourselves, this training ensured we could be efficiently productive
right from the start," Woods said.
"I have high expectations of Sapphire and am encouraged by the
product so far. While our use is in its infancy, we are very happy
with how it presents and its ease of use. Importantly for us, the
people at TransLogix are very helpful and professional and there is
great potential for our relationship.
"We intend to expand our use of Sapphire's functionality to
e-commerce and web viewing to allow our customers to monitor jobs
and invoices. This will open up considerable opportunity for
marketing by allowing us to offer tangible services differentiators
to clients. And we'll be looking to integrate our GPS tracking into
the system and develop Container Validation to ISO 6346," Woods
concluded.
About the Woods Group
(www.woodsgrain.com.au)
The Woods Group is an Australian, family-owned, diversified
agribusiness that for the past 39 years has operated in the key
areas of grain farming, marketing, milling and transport. It is
headquartered in Goondiwindi (350 km south-west of Brisbane) in the
premium grain growing region of Southern Queensland and Northern
NSW. The company has a commitment to and a long term view of the
grain industry, and currently has a dedicated and experienced staff
of more than 90 people.
About TransLogix (www.translogix.com.au)
TransLogix is Australasia's leading supplier of transport and
logistics solutions with more than 330 customers supported from
offices in Auckland, Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. The Transport
Management and 3rd Party Logistics suite includes more than 30
integrated modules covering accounting, transport management,
warehouse, workshop, service, optimisation, scheduling, driver
fatigue management, web portal, mobility, POD, GPS, mapping,
tracking, Business Intelligence, and document imaging.
For further information please contact:
Susan Burt, TransLogix, +61 2 9467 9400
Shuna Boyd, BoydPR, +61 2 9418 8100
Click here for a free software evaluation guide, to request an obligation free appraisal or simply call TransLogix today.