BOAGroundOps

Nature of Business
Brokers Worldwide is a full service international mail distribution and lettershop company, specializing in the worldwide distribution of books, magazines, journals, catalogs, promotional mail, personalized correspondence, invoices, renewal invoices and parcels. The Ground Ops department is located in our Philadelphia facility, where currently all scheduling takes place. We also have facilities in Chicago and San Francisco. Ground Ops will schedule deliveries to all of these locations.

Issues Faced
The Brokers Worldwide Ground Operations Department is responsible for arranging the transportation of our Customer's mail to our facilities so that it may be processed and sent out. This includes scheduling the transportation of mail shipments with multiple outside Carriers (trucking companies), verifying that all scheduled shipments were received, and approving the invoices from the Carriers. The Ground Ops module of the Brokers Operations Automation (BOA) system will support these functions.

Remedies
The Customer Service department receives requests for pickup and delivery of our customer's mail from their location to one of Brokers Worldwide locations for processing. The request may come directly from a Brokers Worldwide customer, or from a third party such as a lettershop or printer. For example if our customer has hired a printer to print their catalogs, we would pick the catalogs up directly from the printer. The request is usually via phone, but may also be by email or fax.

Customer Service will record some information about the pickup (what time the mail will be ready, where to pick up the mail up from, etc.) into the Ground Ops program. A pickup taken by Customer Service will have a status of 'Pending'. At times, Ground Ops may also perform Customer Service's function of receiving the pickup request.

The Pickup Information must then be available to the Ground Ops department so they may schedule a carrier to pick up and deliver the mail. They will record the scheduling information into the Ground Ops System, at which time the Pickup status will switch to 'Scheduled'.

Benefits
The Ground Ops module of the Brokers Operations Automation (BOA) system now supports the Customer Service department requests for pickup and delivery of customer's mail from their location to one of Brokers Worldwide locations for processing. The request may come directly from a Brokers Worldwide customer, or from a third party such as a lettershop or printer. For example if our customer has hired a printer to print their catalogs, we would pick the catalogs up directly from the printer. The request is usually via phone, but may also be by email or fax.

Customer Service will record some information about the pickup (what time the mail will be ready, where to pick up the mail up from, etc.) into the Ground Ops program. A pickup taken by Customer Service will have a status of 'Pending'. At times, Ground Ops may also perform Customer Service's function of receiving the pickup request.