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In a sector as fast moving and competitive as the courier industry, efficiency is always key. Businesses need to be able to fill drivers’ time with deliveries, make every journey count, meet client needs – and do it all quickly, simply and profitably. Luckily for those of us working in the industry, technological advances are always providing better means to do all this. In this article, we’ll run through the integration of booking system TopBox with popular freight exchange Courier Exchange (CX), summarising how using both of these tools can help your firm reach its peak performance. TopBox Not to be confused with filesharing service DropBox, TopBox is a cloud-based system that facilitates same-day courier bookings. It has a range of crucial functions for fleet controllers, allowing them to view: • All active jobs • All collection and delivery points • Real-time whereabouts of all drivers. Developed by DA Systems (you can visit the company’s website to get a more in-depth overview of the product) and using Google’s maps technology, TopBox provides massive efficiency savings. And what’s more, it’s now integrated with the very popular online CX freight exchange. Courier Exchange With over 38,000 members, CX is the UK’s busiest and fastest growing freight exchange, attracting customers with the user-friendliness and a wealth of features including real-time updates on available loads and access to a vast ‘virtual’ fleet of drivers. Integration Many businesses use the platform to buy and sell capacity. The reason for this is simple: it’s much better to ensure a job gets filled than to leave the client to search elsewhere. This function also helps avoid wasted time and mileage, making it much easier to ensure drivers are always travelling with loads. But how does this link to TopBox? One of the app’s best features is that it can show all available drivers within a given radius of a job. Managers can of course expand the search radius to see if they have a courier nearby. But even then some vehicles may simply be too far out to make delivery practical. Enter CX. Unfilled jobs can be sent over to the online exchange with the touch of a button – a user just has to just click ‘Allocate to CX’ and the job will be automatically posted without any more input needed from the driver. Users no longer need to click out of TopBox and into CX to manually allocate work. Even better, drivers are instantly notified of the posting, and can accept or reject it immediately. This lets controllers know instantly whether the job has been filled – and to try different strategies if it remains unfilled. All in all, the linking of DA Systems’ booking and tracking program with CX’s freight exchange allows managers to far more easily fill jobs. Crucially, it also keeps clients happy, reducing the chance that any deliveries will go unfulfilled. Author Plate Norman Dulwich is a Correspondent for Courier Exchange, the world's largest neutral trading hub for same day jobs in the express freight industry. Connecting logistics professionals across the UK and Europe through their online freight exchange transport businesses are networked together, trading jobs and capacity through what is now the fastest growing Freight Exchange in the UK.
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