Step 3. Setting transportation company workflow

The transportation company may consist of three departments: Sales, Freight and Shipping and Certification and Customs Clearance. Let's describe functions and obligations of each one.

• Sales department. Sales agents are the persons who are responsible for attraction of customers. They contact customers and send them commercial offers, sales agents are the face of the transportation company.
• Freight and Shipping. This department is responsible for transportation of goods, all necessary shipping documents, shipment insurance, etc.
• Certification and Customs Clearance. Employees of this department make certificates and settle all custom formalities and paper wok.

Creating task list

After Sales Agent sent commercial offers to a potential customer and this customer accepted it, Sales Agent adds the customer in the transportation company's database. As all clients' orders have in general typical tasks, the sales agent can duplicate the task group "TEMPLATE" in order to create a new group "Customer 1". This task group will have a number of tasks that will be allocated to the employees of the transportation company departments. There can be the following typical tasks in the task group:

1. Contacting the customer
2. Getting order details
3. Sending request to the Forwarding Agent
4. Arranging transportation
5. Informing the customer of ETA and freight costs
6. Making procedure of customs
7. Receipt of payment
8. Keeping the customer informed of shipment
9. Reporting to Department Head

The idea of such a task list is that all departments of the transportation company are involved in the working process, and once a department has finished its tasks, the next one will proceed with accomplishing the task list.

Each of mentioned tasks can be specified. When editing a task, an employee can use "Notes" and describe some details or steps of how to perform the task. For example, the task "2.Getting order details" has notes that describe details of the customer's purchase orders: weight, dimensions, package, etc. Or here is another example. The task"4.Arranging Transportation" has the following notes:

• check available variants of transportation
• calculate freight costs and transportation time
• advise the client transportation time and freight costs.

This list of details can be applied as a list of sub-tasks, i.e. Forwarding Agent can specify directions and steps of his working. The "Notes" has built-in editor: you can change text color, size, make a list, etc.

Director of the transportation company can watch the workflow and interfere in it any time. So the working process is under full control, and Director is able to monitor and manage it. The task "Reporting to Department Head" requires from employees to send reports to the Heads of departments.

Setting workflow statuses

VIP Task Manager allows to build custom workflow and add new task statuses. The default workflow has the following task statuses: Draft, Created, In Progress, Completed, Cancelled. You can edit this workflow or create a new one and add new task statuses. For example, the head of Sales Department can be assigned to the task "Receipt of payment" in order to check all payment documents. For that reason new task status "Verification" and "Verified" can be added. Once the department head has finished checking, he sets task status "Verified" and so his subordinates will proceed with payment receiving.

1. Step 1. Transportation company solution
2. Step 2. Staffing transportation company
3. >> Step 3. Setting transportation company workflow
4. Step 4. Customizing fields for transportation company solution
5. Step 5. Planning transportation company tasks list
6. Step 6. Sharing transportation company tasks
7. Step 7. Documents in task performance of transportation company
8. Step 8. Tracking transportation company tasks
9. Step 9. Creating task reports in transportation company solution
10. Step 10. KPIs for transportation company activity