Central Freight Lines Success Story

Central Freight Lines is one of the country’s premier LTL carriers with headquarters located in Waco, Texas. Central Freight was founded in 1925 by W.W. "Woody" Callan, Sr. and has continued to expand its size and reach ever since. Today they are publicly traded, having grown to over 4000 employees with 87 Terminals serving 20 States. Central Freight has over 10,000 tractors, trailers and delivery trucks to service their customers, handling over 15,000 shipments a day.

The Challenge

For a fast-growing company in the freight industry, handling the enormous volumes of paper documents needed to run the business can be a daunting task. In 1996, Central Freight maintained warehouses full of paper documents and an army of people whose sole job was to find, copy, move, file, or mail the documents needed to operate the company. People spent days digging through boxes looking for misfiled documents.

"We had a room full of copy machines, one dedicated to each clerk who manually sorted the delivery receipts, made copies, and collated them with the customer’s invoice" according to Bob Black, Director of Information Systems. "We had to find a solution that would integrate with our existing freight management and billing systems."

The Quest

Central Freight sent out an RFI, and many imaging vendors responded. PaperWise stood apart from the rest because they were able to provide a completely integrated interface with the existing mainframe system, and to incorporate electronic document imaging into tried-and-true business processes. This differentiation made PaperWise the natural fit for CFL.

Central Freight’s network is designed around a corporate Data Center with a Wide Area Network connecting centralized services to all of the corporate locations. This provided top-notch management, development, and support without excessive IT staff necessary on location throughout the system. Central Freight had recently deployed a fleet of PC’s to all of its locations, setting the stage for a Windows-based imaging solution. Remote administration across an enterprise is difficult, but Central’s I.S. team was up to the challenge. Through the use of desktop management technology and experienced personnel, Central could provide excellent support to the entire organization 24/7.

The PaperWise Solution

The architecture of the proposed PaperWise solution was able to fulfill all of Central's requirements:

• Server A central imaging server was specified to perform all the database and storage functions. This dual-processor Hewlett Packard server was fully populated with hard disk space configured in a single, large volume of nearly 100GB, a vast amount of storage in 1996.
• Production Scanners Kodak Scanners would handle the estimated input load of 30,000 pages per day. These scanners would be deployed at corporate headquarters to allow for careful management of critical scanning and indexing functions.
• Near-line Storage A Hewlett Packard Optical Jukebox with 600 GB of non-editable storage was named to archive images over 120 days old. The PaperWise system automatically performed dual-burns to provide the primary image and a backup copy to be stored offsite.
• PaperWise Application The PaperWise Application was installed on PC’s at all locations throughout the company. The solution was developed to run efficiently across a WAN, requiring minimal bandwidth. 500 Hewlett Packard business-class Vectra computers were ready to support the application.
• Application Integration Interfacing with Central’s Mainframe freight management system would provide for direct input of text documents into the imaging system (COLD). This function would eliminate printing thousands of pages of reports daily across the company, while allowing instant access to current and past reports from user's desktops.
• Fax Server Castelle FaxPress would provide robust, high-capacity network fax appliances, and be the delivery mechanism for daily fax reports. The mainframe system generated daily customer-specific reports and pushed them directly to PaperWise. Control files ran automation processes to pull images and pass them to Castelle’s API with the corresponding fax numbers. This method would handle thousands of outbound reports for delivery between 3 am and 7 am daily.
• Automated Production Rendition Billing was a key component to achieve a complete solution. The mainframe interfaced with PaperWise to track scanned images until all required documents (configurable for each customer) were available. The daily billing job would generate text invoices, PaperWise would format and apply an overlay, retrieve all required supporting documentation, rotate and reduce the images to fit 2 per page, assemble the print job, apply bar-coding in the margins, and spool to the printer. The margin barcode controlled how many pages went into each envelope for mailing. Often 100,000 pages per day would be printed, cut, and processed by a postal inserter.

The Result

The solution was implemented in December of 1997 and revolutionized the way Central handled its paper. "The difference was amazing" says Clay Embry, Vice President of Administration. Everyone in the company had instant access to all documents, easily launched from existing applications. Network fax servers automatically distributed reports and easily delivered requested documents to customers. Rendition billing revolutionized the invoicing process. Billing cycle times and errors were dramatically reduced. Quickly providing document copies with signatures reduced collections problems.

Scalable Solution

Central Freight was experiencing rapid growth, and with this growth capacity requirements were constantly increasing. Over the next few years the imaging installation expanded by 50% and was a vital component at the now 90 locations.

• Central Freight was scanning over 60,000 images a day.
• PaperWise was installed on more than 1200 computers.
• More than 2000 users had access to the system.
• Invoice runs exceeded 100,000 pages per day.

Because PaperWise was providing the core business services of documentation and billing, the system would need to expand without production downtime. The data center was growing from one file server and one imaging server to full racks of Proliant servers. The original HP server was replaced with Proliant DL580 dual Xeon. A StorageWorks 4218 handled a 14-drive storage array with triple the original capacity. A second Hewlett Packard SureStore 1200 Optical Jukebox with 1.2 Terabytes of storage was added to the system. A pair of Castelle FaxPress 5000 appliances provided 16 pooled lines for the daily outbound fax run.

Evolving Processes

While a centralized, high-volume production scanning department was a solid solution, it required shipping all documents back to headquarters for scanning. Customers wanted same-day information on shipments, while the company needed faster billing cycles. A decision was made to de-centralize scanning in 2001.

Central purchased a fleet of Fujitsu Scanners that were deployed to all terminals and configured for remote scanning. The production-class Kodak scanners were relocated to the largest terminals. The PaperWise system was very adaptable and was configured to function without being attached to the database. When the scanning and indexing were completed, the images were automatically packaged, compressed and transmitted via a PaperWise SyncWise server at the Data Center. SyncWise received the FTP transmissions from all remote sites, decompressed them, and imported the images into the database. The system is so efficient that most sites were able to incorporate scanning without increasing their bandwidth, many of which were 56K frame-relay connections. The images would now be available corporate-wide within minutes of being scanned.

Customers were also asking for direct access to images from the web. Central Freight decided to bring up WebWise – a browser-based imaging client providing nearly all the advanced search and retrieval functions of the full Windows client. Hundreds of customers were granted secure access to their images online, anytime from anywhere. The success of web accessibility greatly reduced the number of calls requesting copies of POD’s and signed delivery receipts to CFL’s Customer Service department.

The Collections Department had the daunting task of providing copies of all documents to customers to resolve billing issues. Central decided to incorporate dual monitor technology at these workstations allowing workers to view a receivables screen on one monitor, with images displayed on the other. Two monitors provided much more viewable space at a better price point than one single, large monitor. The PaperWise solution provided tight integration with the Mainframe. With a single key sequence data from the 3270 emulator application was instantly read, and the freight bill number was passed to PaperWise to display the required documentation.

Today and Beyond

Central's Imaging system provides mission-critical functionality to the fast-paced world of LTL transportation.

• The PaperWise system is now running on a Microsoft SQL database and a Proliant Xeon multiple-processor server to handle the needs across the company.
• A new Proliant server has been brought up to handle image storage, with internal disk capacity of nearly a terabyte.
• 60,000 documents are scanned daily and are seamlessly transported to the central imaging server from over 85 remote sites across the country.
• Over 60 million images are available with total storage of approximately 3 Terabytes.
• Retrieval times are subsecond for documents that are on magnetic disk, with archived images available within 20 seconds.
• Over a thousand internal users access the system utilizing either the PaperWise client software or the WebWise browser interface.
• Over 10,000 registered user accounts allow Central’s customers to access their data via WebWise.
• WebWise runs on a dedicated Proliant server, able to handle 500 concurrent users.
• PaperWise stands ready to incorporate a fleet of Multi-Function Peripherals to further reduce operating expenses and extend scan capabilities at remote terminal locations.

"Overall the system delivers rock-solid performance and the flexibility to accommodate anything we throw at it" says Bob Black, Director of I.S., "We look forward to continuing our partnership with PaperWise, along with new features and enhancements - they always deliver."