Case Studies

Mobile Driver Communication Android Upgrade

Benefits

The system developed by Guilford Group provides shippers with information to manage their domestic shipments through various modes of transportation to create a seamless door-to-door product. The service is designed to help customers compress cycle time, lower overall transportation cost, maximize supply chain efficiency, and dramatically improve service. It also tracks containers and equipment to minimize storage, demurrage and rental charges. It makes use of complex business rules and logic to optimize container and equipment usage in compliance with the multiple trading partner agreements.  From its inception, this 3PLs containers have arrived 99.2% on-time.

Precise Customer Invoicing Solution

Summary

This transportation company needed an efficient, cost effective way to accurately calculate both Storage and Per Diem charges, as well as a way to communicate those charges to customers. Customers needed to be able to receive a bill that correctly showed the charges, when they began, when they stopped, and the amount owed.

Benefits

The development and utilization of the Storage and Per Diem application reduced billing errors and produced billing in a timely manner. This transportation company was able to collect more of the charges, and they collected them faster. It also reduced or eliminated 2 positions. This transportation company had a return on their investment in this project of over $100,000 in the first year.

Inventory management and intermodal tracking suite

Summary

At many manufacturing or production facilities this transportation company provides rail cars to be loaded by the customer before being transported to a different location, either within the customer’s location, or by rail across the country. They needed to be able to keep track of what rail cars are at each location, and where they are within the location. There also needed to be a way to communicate when the customer wanted a car moved.

Benefits

The system simplified plant management by letting customers indicate times for car pulls and placement. It supplies crews with standardized before and after documentation and improved data accuracy by using customer supplied data. It assists in the vision of electronic communication between customers and crews.

24 x 7 Support for intermodal operations system

Summary

This transportation company’s Intermodal Terminal Operation System (ITOPS) is an application that supports operations at each of the terminals. It helps manage equipment coming in and out of their facilities, security at the gates, down time of equipment, loading and unloading of the rails, bookings and reservations of equipment and more. This transportation company developed the application themselves and while they didn’t have any issues with the program itself, they saw a need to have an outside firm support the users of the application on a 24 hour, seven day a week basis. This system is in continuous use by many different people in many different locations, and there needed to be someone available at all times to troubleshoot problems. Headquarters for this transportation company was in Baltimore, and in 2004 they moved their headquarters to Jacksonville, Florida. With the move, they would be losing a significant portion of the knowledge base, as many of the personnel would not be moving to Jacksonville and therefore would no longer be with the company.

Benefits

By utilizing Guilford Group as the on call support for the ITOPS application, this transportation company has freed up their IT department to work on other matters. Outsourcing the support saves this transportation company the need for having an in house department that provides 24 hour support, and yet provides a superior level of support to their drivers.

Guilford Group has been supporting the ITOPS application for over 9 years. Throughout the years, by analyzing recurrent issues they have been able to recommend and implement several system enhancements that reduce support issues, increase reliability of the application and provide efficiencies in the daily operations of the business. In the first quarter of 2013, average response time to handle a Priority 1 call was under 2 minutes. This keeps this transportation company’s Intermodal terminals running smoothly, keeps their drivers on the road, and trains on the rails.

Building Long-Term Partnerships - national railway

Client

Fortune 500 Transportation Company

Summary

We have a 20+ years history with a big-seven national railway on projects as well as development, maintenance & support of several enterprise level systems. We have built deep knowledge of business and its processes. Two key areas have been mobile solutions and application to their fleet and customer web portals with automation. These have been enhanced by integrating with internal systems for rapid response and greater accuracy. In addition we manage several enterprise level systems providing 24/7 maintenance and support as well as upgrading these system to meet evolving customer needs.

Mobile Scheduling system

Client

Leading Indiana Home Builder

Summary

Home builder is able to deliver “More Value for the Money” by leveraging technology to keep costs as low as possible. Highly automated processes, information capture and retrieval enable continuous improvement of processes based on accurate information, metrics and benchmarking.

Benefits

One solution developed by Guilford Group is the Viper scheduling system which manages over 800 contractors and vendors in multiple developments. The Viper system enables contractors a detailed timeline of scheduled tasks, and the ability to interact with satellite offices via PDA. The system captures any delays, the reason for the delay, and new target dates. The system automatically reschedules related task, and notes any conditions or exceptions that do not meet service level commitments. Field Construction Managers are kept up to date via wireless technology. This same technology makes it possible for staff to work anywhere, from any location.

Construction safety certification program

Client

Metro Indianapolis Coalition for Construction Safety, Inc. (MICCS), Non-profit established by Eli Lilly, IPL, etc.

Summary

MICCS offers a wide variety of Web-based services to the industry, including membership meetings, seminars and safety awards. MICCS members agree to establish general industry practices as they relate to safety. MICCS is committed to construction safety standards and provides online certification and training.

Benefits

Guilford Group was able to collaborate with MICCS to create a  comprehensive construction safety monitoring and qualification system that matches the high level of quality and commitment to standards that MICCS promotes. In accordance with the typical construction goals of “on time and under budget” Guilford Group staff delivered a system that completely met the requirements of the agency it was designed to support.

Software upgrades for heating a/c unit

Summary

There were several issues that needed to be resolved with ClimbaCab®. The units have embedded Java, and in all there were 16 items that needed to be fixed or refined. These items included issues with firmware flashing, firmware updating, testing of the operating system as it loaded, Java 7 support, Windows 8 testing, reporting and debugging. Every time something went wrong with one of the units, Crosspoint had to send someone out into the field to fix it.

Benefits

Guilford Group had the knowledge and expertise to solve the problems that Crosspoint had with Climbacab®. By combining their experience in application development, with their technical knowledge of hardware, Guilford Group was able to achieve the efficiency that Crosspoint needed.

Dental information management and access system

Client

DecisionBase, Inc

Summary

In the early stages, the DecisionBase development team was successful in
building the software to a certain point, but had limited resources and fewer skills with some of the newer technologies. They also had difficulty keeping up with customer demand for new features and functions and struggled to meet benchmarks and milestones in the Software Development Life Cycle.

Benefits

TiME’s Perio-Profile™ displays both numeric and graphical data, making both your decision-making and your patient’s understanding easier.  All narrative notes are created by filling out Smart-Forms™ check boxes or by selecting from lists to create more detailed records in less time! Smart-Forms™ includes 100 procedure-specific forms, all end-user modifiable.

Iphone / Android Fan Controller

Summary

As a leader in the fan industry, this fan manufacturing company wanted to add an option to their fans that no other company offered. While many fans come with a remote control, this fan manufacturing company wanted an app that allowed users to use their cell phones as a remote to operate the fan and fan light via Bluetooth technology. It needed to operate the fan, the fan speed, the fan light, and the light intensity. It would be a free application available for the Iphone and for Android phones.

Benefits

The development of the app places this fan manufacturing company in the position of being one of the first companies to offer a cell phone app to control a ceiling fan. It injects forward thinking and differentiates them from other fan companies. They are now placed for strategic growth, securing contracts because of this technology with major retailers.

mobile inventory management system

Summary

Company had a massive warehouse in Indiana. They had just installed a new flow rack, which they hoped would allow items to get from the warehouse floor to the trucks. In order to take full advantage of the new flow rack, they needed a better way to communicate with the people in the warehouse to efficiently get items from the warehouse, to the flow rack, and then to load the items onto the trucks.

Benefits

Company was feeling the pressure of downward pricing in the marketplace. They needed to reduce costs to remain competitive. The entire manufacturing, importing and shipping process needed to flow smoothly in order to reduce costs. By implementing the new scanner system in the warehouse, the process became rhythmic and held all the way through shipping. They were able to forecast demand against their current supply more effectively and keep up with the market demands in a cost efficient manner.

Pegasus enterprise system development & support

Summary

Client needed support with a legacy system. In 2007, Guilford Group took over support, maintenance and forward development of the Pegasus application for this Fortune 500 Transportation company. The application is used 24/7/365 by an office staff of approximately 100 people, 2000 customers and 800 drivers.

Benefits

Guilford Group is responsible for making sure the system is running according to an established, industry-leading SLA. To ensure system uptime and performance, we use a monitoring solution that often enables us to fix system issues before our users ever notice. We also have our development staff share in on-call duties to ensure that problems are given the highest level of attention as soon as they arise. We also provide quarterly reporting of all issues, time to resolution and performance against SLA. This accountability and transparency equips us to work with our customer to provide continuous performance improvements.

quick quote web application

Summary

Client wanted to extend the capability of a highly successful quoting engine and order entry system. 

Benefits

These changes had a major impact both in terms of ease of doing business and automation of manual tasks. Customers can now get prices, book all types of loads, track order status and create and schedule self-serve tracking reports through a single application.