BETHESDA, MD – February 15, 2005-- Transportation Costing Group
® (TCG
®), the leading provider of Activity-Based Cost analysis and customer profitability management systems for the transportation industry, today announced that RE Garrison Trucking has successfully completed integration of the newly released interface between the company’s Truckload Cost Information System
® (TL/CIS
®) and the Innovative Enterprise Software
® (IES
®) from Innovative Computing Corporation.
TCG provides a highly effective Activity-Based Cost analysis capability and is currently the only such system that offers a complete, accurate and fully replicable costed traffic database that ties back to the general ledger. The new interface enables truckload motor carriers using Innovative software to seamlessly transfer cost data from Innovative to TCG’s TL/CIS.
“In order to use the TL/CIS solution before the Innovative interface was available we had to manually download cost data to TL/CIS via flat files,” said John E. “Jay” Johnson, chief financial officer of the Cullman, AL-based truckload carrier that operates over 350 tractors. “The interface makes this process seamless, faster and more accurate. Now we simply pull information from our Innovative database into TL/CIS and get the information and reports we need.
TL/CIS allows users to see from a total cost standpoint how profitable each piece of freight, each load, truck, driver or lane actually is and treats each of those as a distinct profit center. The information assists carriers in determining a set of best practices, including the types of freight they can afford to accept and to make changes in rates in lanes where revenue is low.
According to Johnson, “If it becomes necessary to make a rate change, we take the TCG data to our customer and explain why we are not realizing our profitability goals. Armed with this information it’s easier for a customer to understand why a rate change is necessary.”
“One of the biggest benefits of TL/CIS is that it captures costs at the load-level,” Johnson explained. “This has helped us be more successful in improving our revenue, utilization and profitability. With TL/CIS, actual costs are understandable, well reported, and most importantly, accepted by our customers.”
The Activity-Based Cost analysis that TL/CIS provides to RE Garrison has also been very valuable in addressing the challenges posed by changes in driver hours of service rules. Like all motor carriers, RE Garrison was concerned about equipment utilization and revenue production under the new regulations. “We wanted to make sure we understood the impact on cost and profit of any changes that may occur due to the rules changes,” Johnson noted. “Our advantage was that we had the TL/CIS costing system to identify the actual current cost of activities that are most directly affected by the rules changes and quantify those costs, load by load.”
TCG and Innovative Computing Corporation have been co-developing the TL/CIS-IES interface for the past two years. The solution is now available for users of Innovative Enterprise Software Releases 7 and 8 software.
“The new interface is designed to enable truckload motor carriers using TL/CIS and Innovative’s IES solution to gain further advantages of accurate real-time activity-based costing and analysis,” stated Ken Manning, TCG President. “We are pleased to see the returns RE Garrison has gained from utilizing the new interface.”
ABOUT TCGTransportation Costing Group is the provider of the most widely used suite of Activity-Based Costing models to the motor carrier industry. TCG provides models tailored to specific carrier operations. Information on the Activity-Based Costing Models and services offered by TCG can be obtained by contacting Ken Manning at (800) 328-9700, or by visiting the TCG web site at
www.tcgcis.comMedia Contact:Susan Fall
LaunchIt Public Relations
858-490-1050
susan@launchitpr.com