IT strategies enhance customer service: Manitoulin Transport has become a customer-service leader through Web initiatives.

• Author: Ross, Ian
• Position: Information Technology -- Special Report - Brief Article

Staying ahead of their transportation competition through some imaginative technology-based concepts is what makes. Manitoulin Transport an industry customer-service leader.

Through the Internet, the large regional freight carrier has made itself accessible to its clients 24 hours a day from a computer anywhere in the world.

On the forefront of the Internet boom since the late 1990s with its customer shipment tracking capability, Manitoulin is certainly not content to rest on its laurels.

Being headquartered in Gore Bay on Manitoulin Island offered no great advantages for the less-than-truckload carrier to engage in e-business back in 1997 with no fibre optic, broadband infrastructure nearby to speak of.

By teaming with Ontario Northland Systems, they brought Internet access to the company and the island residents in exchange for providing storage facilities for the ON's telecommunications equipment.

Manitoulin's shipment tracking capabilities are just a small portion of the range of services they have built on the Net, says Robert wilks, the company's information systems manager.

By creating a password-protected area, clients can receive customized reports on detailed shipment information, historical information, receive bills of lading, proof of delivery, freight ETA and track their shipment wherever it goes in North America. They can receive immediate e-mail updates. every time their freight reaches a Manitoulin terminal or one of its strategic partners.

"The Web is on our main system so the information that the customer gets is as up-to-date as our customer-service people get," says Wilks.

Sometime in the future they hope to have product satellite-tracking capability installed on all their trucks with second-by-second, real-time shipment information.

Customers can log on to their Web site and trace shipments through purchase orders, probills and any reference number on their bill of lading. Invoicing and all customer statements can be done over the Net and customer reports can be prepared and e-mailed on a daily, weekly or monthly basis.

Wilks says they are constantly expanding their capabilities to be more flexible to customers' needs such as e-mailing pickups which automatically end up in the carrier's dispatch and manifesting systems.

Among their ongoing pilot...