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Badger Express Success Story

Badger Express, a family-owned business based out of Fall River, Wisconsin, is a nationwide truckload and LTL carrier servicing the forty-eight contiguous states. Founded in 1993 by Farrel Jourdan, his wife Ardis, son Todd, and their daughter Kristie, the company started with four power units and seven dry vans. Badger has increased its fleet to 175 power units and 350 dry vans, and proudly offers its customers a variety of services including warehousing, expedited team service, cold storage, brokerage services, LTL service and a pallet manufacturing operation.

Badger Express is dedicated to TOTAL customer satisfaction and realizes the importance of earning their customers' business. This commitment to service excellence and Badger's team of highly-experienced drivers allow the company to serve more than 4,000 satisfied customers.

Choosing Technology

With an eye on the future and a decision to make the company more efficient, Badger Express turned to PaperWise. The company installed PaperWise while they were still dispatching manually. Owner Ardis Jourdan, who was working with accounts payable, spoke with other carriers who said, "Let me get that image; I'll just fax it over to you." Realizing they were saving time by not going through file cabinets, she asked what system these other carriers were using. They told her - PaperWise. After looking at a number of systems, she chose PaperWise, basing the decision on ease of use, product value, and cost efficiency.

Increasing Technology

Badger initially used PaperWise only for accounts receivable. "However," adds Rich Goldade, IT manager, "we have been expanding our use of PaperWise over the last three years, and we are almost to the point that we are completely paperless."

PaperWise offers many different platforms which are geared to meet the different technology and budget needs of their clients. Utilizing this flexibility, Badger first installed PaperWise Plus, the PaperWise ASP subscription platform. With the company's growth and increased focus on technology they soon moved to the PaperWise Enterprise platform where they host the solution on their own servers.

In 2003 Badger selected TMW as their business management system and integrated TMW's operating system with the PaperWise document imaging system. Uniting TMW's management system and the PaperWise document imaging system has created greater operations and management tools for Badger Express.

Rendition Billing

Badger incorporated the PaperWise system's rendition billing module using it not only with the transportation division but also for the billing in their warehousing and pallet operations.

"We are saving thirty man-hours per week since we incorporated rendition billing," says Goldade. "We scan a document, touching it once instead of four times, and get it into the mail. We have eliminated the sorting, the collating, and the stapling."

"Having PaperWise in place, we are more accurate, more efficient, and definitely much quicker than we used to be. Work that used to take two, three, or four days is now done by one person, in one day. We process about 1,000 invoices per week, and, with PaperWise, that is now accomplished in just one day. PaperWise is a great help in making us more efficient and better able to serve our customers," Goldade says.

Saving Money and Time

Using PaperWise, Badger Express saves money on paper and postage. They save time having all of their documents readily available and connected with client's account in TMW. "We no longer have stacks of paper on our desks. We don't all have to cram into the filing room, file documents, and retrieve them again later. People call in and want a copy of a document. We don't have to dig out the original copy; we have it in PaperWise. Now we can fax or e-mail those documents to them straight from our system," says Goldade.

Saving Space

When Badger first implemented the PaperWise system, the company cut the number of filing cabinets by half. And, following the recent implementation of rendition billing, there are now only two filing cabinets in the office.

In the Future

Part of Badger's future plans is to include different ways for clients to receive their documents. When setting up print jobs, Badger will have the ability to set customers up for fax, e-mail, or actual printed documents. "It's exciting to be able to offer customers different solutions," says Goldade. "This equals a big time saver for the customers. They won't have to wait for documents to arrive through the mail."

The PaperWise Focus on Service

PaperWise has a reputation for providing outstanding support to their customers. Customers' suggestions, requests, and needs drive development and improvements in the PaperWise system. "When I call, customer support responds. I just couldn't ask for better service," says Goldade. "When I need something, it gets taken care of right away."