31/08/2010

All Earth Group Selects TransLogix' Flexible Sapphire Transport Management Suite

Perth, 31 August, 2010

All Earth Group has successfully deployed the TransLogix integrated Sapphire Transport Management Software suite to deliver "one version of the truth" across its diverse business units.

Operating a waste transfer station in Perth's eastern suburbs, All Earth Group receives and recycles inert and green waste into quality construction, civil and landscaping products. All Earth recycles more than 70 percent of that waste. The Group also boasts a fleet of over 80 plant and bulk haulage vehicles and offers plant hire, bulk haulage, screening and crushing, and fully contracted civil site works services including site clean up and waste disposal, onsite recycling, bulk earthworks, underground services and subdivisional development requirements. On top of that, All Earth's Garden Centre provides a full range of garden and landscaping materials, including its range of recycled products. The recent addition of a skip business has further diversified this already multi-disciplined company.

This diverse business, with its complex operational and administrative coordination requirements, has grown "from the kitchen table" and 4 staff to over 60 staff in just ten years.

Heidi Dauth, Director of Administration and Finance at the All Earth Group, said: "Our set of spreadsheets and basic accounting package had worked very well for us but we'd outgrown them. It was time to replace many with one automated and fully integrated system. We needed to know we had integrity in the data we were relying on, we needed better reporting and to reduce revenue leakage."

The Group identified that maintenance of the old system, which relied on two key individuals, could be easily jeopardised and opened the business to a high degree of risk: "If we'd 'eaten the same salmon' we would have been in deep trouble," Dauth said.

"As an enterprise owner, your competitive advantage is in your business model and in today's environment you must embrace technology to leverage that advantage. But you can't rely on software to create ideas or your differentiators. We needed an IT partner to meet our business, not make us fit them."

The All Earth Group developed a brief for an integrated solution that would offer flexibility and capture all information in one system to provide critical data integrity, searchability and customer relationship management.

Having assessed in detail all available offerings from more than half a dozen providers, Dauth said the TransLogix Sapphire suite was selected as: "It was the only one that could do what we needed across ERP, transport, accounts and personnel. We had considered building our own system but the risks were too great and TransLogix offered us the security of a well proven product. Because we don't do simple A-to-B transporting, Sapphire was the only solution that met the quirks of each business unit and brought them together for our accounting purposes."

The new system includes Sapphire's Transport, Accounts, Payroll, Asset Ledger and Workshop modules, which allows visibility across the whole business and will help drive efficiencies and customer satisfaction. The solution enables All Earth Group to capture and measure the cost of jobs and loads and provide real time visibility of operational profitability.

Dauth said: "We rely on our own operators plus 50-100 sub-contractors each day to bring us the 2,000 pieces of paper each month to do our invoicing. We knew we must have had leakage but couldn't quantify it. Now, each sale has a unique identifier so we know what pieces of paper are missing and can chase them."

Further automation and a move to paperless operations may be undertaken in the future using TransLogix's Mobility technologies in All Earth's own trucks in its newly acquired skip bin business.

"We often have clients using different service types within our business and we can now see the complete picture from one view. And, importantly, our sales team now has a whole of business and whole of customer understanding," Dauth said.

Another serious consideration in the selection of new software was how employees would embrace the automation and the new processes. But Dauth explained that because TransLogix could make it look familiar, such as renaming data fields to existing language, there has been little resistance: "There is now a consistent look and feel across the business. There is one lot of information in the background which presents differently for each business unit. I can see down the track we'll be able to benefit from multi-skilling and mobilising staff across the business units because training and system use is familiar, therefore so much easier," Dauth said.

The development of a weighbridge interface by TransLogix for the All Earth Group was, according to Dauth, a great example of the confidence and professionalism which TransLogix brought to the table. Most weighbridge systems are standalone with some feed into accounting packages. "We needed a more complex interface to overcome the problems of time expended and the data integrity in our manual export-manipulate-import system," Dauth said.

The interface now captures the arrival of a truck at the weighbridge; records its registration, type of load and weight; accesses the customer information, calculates the cost from the contract and prints a ticket.

Anselm Waterfield, CEO of TransLogix, said: "All Earth Group is an excellent example of what can be achieved "out of the box" from the deep functionality and high degree of flexibility available from Sapphire. Now the core modules are bedded down providing one version of the truth across the business, we look forward to deploying more "smarts" to drive further efficiencies and help All Earth build its competitive advantage."

"TransLogix is tying it all together for us and the savings are starting to flow," Dauth concluded.

About All Earth Group - www.allearth.com.au

All Earth Group is a Western Australia owned company that specialises in logistics, project management and resource recovery, as well as supply of recycled and new construction, civil and landscaping products servicing the domestic, commercial and public sectors.

About TransLogix (www.translogix.com.au )

TransLogix is Australasia's leading supplier of transport and logistics solutions with more than 350 customers ranging from small family operated businesses through to large, publicly listed multi-user, multi-depot transport companies. With offices in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Auckland, it works closely with customers to provide effective solutions to the rapid and significant changes that are encountered in today's competitive marketplace.

The TransLogix 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