• Omnis desktop solution •
Omnis delivers fast development
and profitability for logistics solution provider
Norfolk
UK
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The Challenge: The logistics industry is a highly competitive market and one which is very sensitive to costs and changes in local and global economies. Increasingly, distribution companies and businesses of all types are outsourcing their logistics requirements which is driving growth amongst third-party logistics providers. To enable this expansion, logistics companies require flexible and easy-to-use software solutions that allow them to run operations more efficiently and enhance their service offerings.
The Solution
One such solution is Freedom, created for the logistics industry by Catalina Software using Omnis Studio.
Freedom is a logistics package tailored to the Same-day courier and chauffeur industries. It covers all business functions, including initial job booking (via telephone or web), scheduling the job, communicating with the driver (including two-way data), tracking the vehicle, invoicing the customer, and paying the driver. The unique selling point of Freedom is its flexibility, or “freedom of choice”, whereby the user has a high degree of control over how the system behaves and how information is displayed. For example, users can design, store and reuse transport planning windows, they can change the size and content of each “component” on windows, as well as defining complex rules concerning how items are displayed in the real-time street level mapping.
The flexibility of Freedom allows users to drill-down multiple levels and easily navigate through different elements of a job, vehicle, customer account, and so on. The auditing feature in Freedom is rated highly by users. Whenever users modify or carry out specific actions on data records (jobs, drivers, vehicles etc.), an audit is maintained of the action performed, by whom, along with the date and time. This proves invaluable in providing great customer service and enables Freedom users to minimise support calls.
All Freedom customers are signed-up to the Freedom development partner programme, which provides ongoing development and the release of new versions of Freedom – and all customers upgrade to the latest version. For a monthly fee, customers never have an “out of date” system, so never have to fund a large capital outlay for a new system. The average size of a Freedom customer is around 150 vehicles and 20-30 users. The largest customer operates over 1,000 vehicles, with 250 Freedom users and a throughput of over 10,000 transport jobs per day.
The Company
Catalina Software specialise in software for the Distribution & Logistics industry, covering a wide variety of business activities from warehousing to manufacturing, and HGVs to limousines. They are specialists at integrating their products with other systems such as vehicle tracking, distribution planning and postcode/address lookup systems.
Why Omnis
Having created a development framework in Omnis as the basis for Freedom, Catalina Software have been able to deploy a number of logistics applications built on the Freedom framework, extending their product portfolio and increasing profit margins. The framework enables very rapid development, re-use of code and provides a tried and trusted foundation for many projects.
“By using Omnis Studio to develop and support Freedom, Catalina Software are able to leverage faster development and easier ongoing support – Omnis Studio is key to the profitability of our business.” Graeme Whiting, Managing Director & founder of Catalina Software Ltd.
Graeme Whiting,
Managing Director & founder of Catalina Software Ltd.