DocumentPower Enterprise


McLeod Software’s DocumentPower Enterprise is a complete document management system providing document capture, document image storage, and business process automation. It is completely integral to our transportation management systems, LoadMaster and PowerBroker. This document and image management system was built from the ground up for our customers in trucking, brokerage, and logistics businesses. The FlowLogix visual workflow tools in this system allow our customers to create and customize their own business process automation solutions, which interact with all of the functions in LoadMaster and PowerBroker.


Capture


Document capture begins the process; when paper is turned into an electronic image, DocumentPower provides a broad spectrum of capture options to accomplish this:

  • Scan stations set up inside an office or a terminal can handle high volume as well as on-demand scanning of paperwork.
  • McLeod’s Mobile Applications give your drivers and staff access to capture and index documents directly from their mobile devices, whether on the road or in the office.
  • Email to Imaging and Print to Imaging provides an additional option for your organization to capture incoming emailed documents and store them in a single, centralized repository.
  • 3rd Party Integration provides an interface and other options to receive images from outside vendor systems or apps directly into DocumentPower.


Store


In today’s highly competitive transportation industry, companies are looking to handle more volume in their back office with the same number of staff, and reduce the time to bill a customer, collect money, and pay drivers. McLeod helps companies meet these goals. Stop hunting for that piece of paper!

Electronic Filing Cabinets
After indexing and classification, your documents are stored in electronic filing cabinets much like the filing cabinets in your office. These electronic cabinets are defined by you, and secured based on your company needs. Filing methods in the cabinets are set up based on the specific indexed categories that you plan to store, such as billing, safety, drivers, etc. The indexing of documents is defined by how you want to search and retrieve images for your business purposes, including bills of lading, rate confirmations, driver records, and invoices. Document distribution is simple, because images are scanned once and automatically indexed to multiple cabinets where you need them.

Indexing
DocumentPower supports capturing images from just about any source: scanners, truck stop or in-cab scans, email and print to imaging, mobile capture apps, and 3rd party systems. But these documents are not only captured in the system, they are also indexed in a way that ensures they have the right associations for the type of image file they are and the things they pertain to, such as loads or drivers. Indexing is automated for many images coming from Mcleod mobile apps or scanning stations, and some third-party applications, which capture predefined indexing data submitted by the user. Files without indexing data can be transferred to a work queue or folder for manual indexing. There will never again be a need to print and scan in order to define a document type or make associations for an image.  

Document Retention Made Easy
DocumentPower gives you the ability to design your own document retention plan with archiving and purging capabilities. Often, companies do not want to keep a document beyond their internally defined document retention policy. By having an electronic image and paperless system handled by DocumentPower, your company can automate the purging of documents based on different criteria, such as scan date. Compliance with your retention policy is easy, because it becomes fully automated.


Automating Document Indexing


DocumentPower has some unique indexing tools that can automate this process: Optical Character Recognition (OCR), Optical Mark Recognition (OMR), and Barcode Recognition for dimensional bar codes.

DocumentPower’s Forms Recognition and Auto Indexing function has features that differentiate the McLeod Solution:

  • Define large numbers of classification templates without any impact on the system performance
  • Users can define OMR templates
  • Recognize documents even when scanned upside down or scaled
  • Recognize even small receipts taped on a blank piece of paper
  • Automatically recognize and rotate the document to right side up


Documents in a Relational Database
To make automation work, documents must be stored in a database that establishes relational links, such as customer ID, driver ID, times, dates, weights, and other pieces of relevant information that are gathered and saved with it. DocumentPower employs the Microsoft SQL Server relational database to make the systems indexing process fast and reliable.  


Receiving and Indexing an Image will Kick Off Other Tasks or Workflows
During the capture process, indexing a digital image can kick off other tasks or workflows that will set in motion business process automation that converts human tasks into machine tasks. It will always compress time in ways that let your organization gain efficiency. Almost every McLeod customer will tell you that this automation has sped up customer billing and cash collections in ways that increase cash flow and help them get paid faster.


Integral Automation Process


An important part of this robust image and document management system is FlowLogix, a visual workflow designer that is used to create Business Process Automation (BPA). By combining a visual workflow tool with a data-driven BPA designer into one product, FlowLogix allows users to quickly build BPA solutions. FlowLogix is integral to your LoadMaster and PowerBroker system, giving it the unique ability to perform routine workflow tasks that would normally require complex programming or manual intervention. FlowLogix also interacts with other systems and processes.


The DocumentPower Client
Administration is a crucial function for the integration of all images and processes. We have built a user-friendly and efficient way to do this through the McLeod Software Imaging Client. This user access point is an administrative environment, fully capable of scanning, indexing, retrieving, annotating, and emailing any document. It also provides a way to deal with every exception that ever occurs in the automated processes.


Work Queues and Managing by Exception
Dealing with automated process exceptions in DocumentPower works much like an inbox on your desk. The electronic images are held in work queues, where administrators and users can deal with the exceptions, or complete missing data that stopped a process. Any business process can be monitored, measured, and benchmarked. This not only keeps things from falling through the cracks, it also helps identify your bottlenecks and prevent process breakdowns, allowing your processes to continually flow, creating a “manage by exception” environment for your users.


Finding Bottlenecks and Measuring Process Performance
DocumentPower includes process performance monitoring tools that enable administrators to look at flow rates, processing speed, user performance and overall process performance for a number of your back office processes. The tools can also help administrators explore the root causes of slow processing or hang ups in ways that facilitate continuous improvement.


Mobility


Integral Document Mobile Image Capture
The DocumentPower Mobile Image Capture app for Android and iOS devices is included as part of the DocumentPower system, allowing users to capture and upload images directly to their DocumentPower environment. Customers incur no additional document charges, which so many other mobile capture services require. This means that drivers, carriers, and office personnel can index and send images through their mobile device from anywhere they have data service. Speeding up every process by not waiting for physical paperwork means the billing cycle can start sooner and be can be completed faster.

The Mobile Image Capture app is just one of the many mobile solutions McLeod offers to capture images directly to DocumentPower.

  • McLeod’s Logix Anywhere apps are enabled using capture for DocumentPower - The Logix Anywhere mobile application platform delivers an easy-to-use method for your drivers, carriers, and office employees to capture and index images using their handheld mobile device.
  • Logix Solutions Short Haul - For short haul drivers that deliver a high volume of loads daily and may only submit paperwork once a week to be processed in a huge batch, the McLeod Logix Solutions Short Haul app provides an opportunity to create a constant flow of data directly into LoadMaster. Drivers can submit electronic short haul ticket data, as well as images from a mobile device or tablet, that puts the information about those loads into the system as they happen, not waiting on nightly or weekly batch processing after they happened.


Logix Solutions

Out-of-the-Box Business Process Automation


McLeod Software has created a library of off-the-shelf business process automation solutions built with FlowLogix. These FlowLogix preconfigured business process automation solutions save time, speed up processes, eliminate unnecessary labor, and increase your business process efficiency. They are quick to implement and follow common industry best practices for automating a wide range of things.


Get Paid Faster
In trucking, one of the great battles that process automation helps you win is the ever present need to speed up billing and collections and improve your cash flow. 


Billing Accelerator
McLeod’s Logix Solutions Billing Accelerator generates daily reports of unbilled, delivered orders that are missing the paperwork required to invoice a customer. The solution also notifies drivers and carriers of missing paperwork using email and electronic forms via email, SMS, or mobile communications, providing those drivers or carriers with an easy and quick way to upload the missing paperwork. By using this automation, companies can decrease the number of phone calls billing clerks make to both drivers and carriers, and get quicker turnaround of missing paperwork to keep your billing and settlement processes moving.

Billing & Settlements
Logix Solutions Billing & Settlements workflow brings automation, insight, and visibility to this traditionally manual process. This is a single workflow designed to complete most of the manual tasks required prior to billing. FlowLogix evaluates every document that arrives in the DocumentPower billing application, automatically checks-in when the BOL is received, and sets a BOL received date on the order. The workflow checks for any missing paperwork that particular customer requires, and will wait until all paperwork is present before placing everything in a workflow queue for staff to review prior to billing.

Rendition Billing
With DocumentPower Rendition Billing, if a customer has specific document requirements for payment of an invoice, such as a proof of delivery or signed rate confirmation, the system will wait to send an invoice until all the documents are received. When all of the needed documents have been received, invoices are created, and electronic copies of the documentation will automatically accompany the invoice sent to the customer. This process will eliminate most of the labor and costs associated with collating invoices and supporting paperwork to speed up payment and reduce the Days Sales Outstanding (DSO).

Automated Collections
The manual process of managing past-due invoices requires dedicated personnel and lots of time spent following up with those customers. McLeod’s Logix Solutions Automated Collections product automatically monitors invoice aging, then sends the accounts receivable aging report to past due customers, along with the original invoice and all the paperwork that supports each invoice, as a reminder that their payment is overdue.

Accounts Payable
McLeod’s Logix Solutions Accounts Payable efficiently streamlines and tracks the distribution and approval process of invoices that come into your company. As invoices are received, they are scanned into DocumentPower and a workflow automatically creates payment vouchers in LoadMaster or PowerBroker, then sends notices to the approver via email. Take advantage of payment discounts offered by giving your approver complete visibility and the ability to quickly approve open vouchers directly from a computer, tablet, or mobile device.

Process Automation for Brokerage Operations
Brokerage and logistics companies are always working to expand their carrier networks; and in many cases, you don’t have time for delays. Setting up new carriers, or creating confirmed rate confirmations, brings cumbersome manual processes that involve faxes or emails back and forth and wastes precious time. Logix Solutions uses a combination of business process automation tools, rules-defined logic, and electronic forms to transform a slow, error-prone, labor-intensive chore into a quick and accurate process. 


Carrier Onboarding
Logix Solutions Carrier Onboarding takes over once a new carrier is added to PowerBroker. It examines the carrier’s qualifications through an automated validation process based on a variety of criteria you have specified. If carriers meet the requirements, a paperless and completely electronic version of the carrier packet, contract, and insurance certificate requests are sent with the ability to capture signatures and collect data. This combination of workflows, using electronic forms and simple emails prompting a carrier to complete the various forms through a direct portal on your PowerBroker, system saves time and makes it easy for both you and the carrier. 

eRate Confirmations
Using McLeod’s eRate Confirmation solution with PowerBroker, dispatchers can get a rate confirmation email out to the carrier with just one click. The email contains a link to a secure website within your PowerBroker system where the carrier can accept or decline the rate confirmation, sign it, and submit it from their computer, tablet, or mobile device. If the confirmation is accepted, the dispatcher immediately sees the acceptance in PowerBroker. Both parties receive an email attachment of the signed rate confirmation, which is securely stored in your DocumentPower system.

DocumentPower Mobile Capture
Designed with the carrier drivers in mind, DocumentPower Mobile Capture gives your carriers the ability to index and upload images directly through their mobile device into your DocumentPower system. Carrier drivers can access the load via the routing number you send them, without a username and password. Automating document capture and indexing with this tool leads to faster billing and carrier pay, by giving the carrier an easy way to submit POD’s, OS&D’s, BOL’s, or other documents through their mobile device.


Custom Business Process Automation


Business processes will always differ from company to company. And before FlowLogix, many companies found no easy or affordable way to build truly capable Business Process Automation (BPA) solutions for their specific needs. McLeod customers can use FlowLogix Designer to create custom workflow processes without the need for expensive and complex hard code programming. FlowLogix Designer allows customers to develop and test new processes from scratch, or use McLeod’s extensive library of proven process management solutions as your starting point.

The ability to create, manage, and maintain a complex web of different tasks is difficult, but breaking each process down to a single task means a variety of independent tasks or functions joined together will create a complete end-to-end workflow for your process.

These custom workflows are built using FlowLogix Designer, beginning with a variety of different tasks stored or created in the FlowLogix engine. Each defined Task begins with a start and stop point, incorporating decision points that determine what will happen next. The tasks you create appear as an Object. Once an Object is complete, using FlowLogix drag and drop technology, you can connect these Objects together, working in a series of calls back and forth, referencing each other to create a functioning workflow.

FlowLogix workflows can connect DocumentPower, LoadMaster, PowerBroker, or even outside systems within each workflow. Workflows contain action steps and triggers to execute actions within a workflow. Triggers can be:

  • Addition of a specific document
  • Change in the data elements within the system
  • Rapid alerts using the McLeod Rapid Alert Notification System (RANS) module
  • Events within LoadMaster or PowerBroker
  • External calls from outside the system

FlowLogix captures audit logs and step-by-step tracking of events to ensure you can understand exactly what happened inside the process automation while it is running. The development environment includes a simulation tool to let developers test and troubleshoot the automation workflows they create. FlowLogix Designer is a tool that even a process engineer, or business analyst can use to create custom automation solutions.


3rd Party Document Integration API


DocumentPower offers an optional API to integrate your system with 3rd party document capture systems, allowing indexed image input streams to originate from external systems and processes or non-McLeod Software solutions.

The Industry’s Only Integral Document Imaging and Business Process Automation Solution
While there are many document image management and business process automation tools in the market, some even focusing on the transportation industry, none are completely integral to a transportation management system in the way DocumentPower is integral to, not just “integrated with,” McLeod’s LoadMaster and PowerBroker systems. For this reason, the capabilities McLeod Software offers our customers are never matched by other document imaging or business process automation solutions.

 

Contact McLeod Software Today