Fleet Management News & Business Info | Commercial Carrier Journal
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/388078
COMMERCIAL CARRIER JOURNAL | OCTOBER 2014 45 technology T he record 850 attendees at McLeod Software's annual user conference probably expected that company president Tom McLeod would talk about new prod- ucts and trends in the transportation industry, but he took a slightly different approach. To open the conference, McLeod gave attendees a framework to help guide their understanding while at the event, held Sept. 15-17 at the Gaylord Convention Center in National Harbor, Md., on the banks of the Potomac River. The company has channeled all of its product development into five technology streams that lead to what McLeod calls the "frictionless information era." In some ways, the Potomac River might not have been the ideal backdrop to talk about "frictionless" movement. The Potomac once divided the Union from the Confederacy and today flows through the nation's divided and gridlocked capital. Further down- stream, however, it empties into a large body of water, the Chesapeake Bay, and one of the nation's largest ports in Baltimore. McLeod Software has been taking its customers on a journey the past few years, McLeod said. "Where we are taking your company is a little something I like to call the connected enterprise – specifically the connected transpor- tation enterprise," McLeod said. McLeod Software provides enterprise management software sys- tems for asset and nonasset transportation companies. Its products span the full range of what people refer to as "back-office" systems for order entry, planning, visibility and decision support. The Internet and wireless technologies have connected people and businesses to information sources around the world, but "connections don't mean a lot unless you are moving the right information," McLeod said. "We are not about connections for connections' sake. We want to move information." McLeod said the company has products that reduce the amount of friction involved in moving information to the right people at the right time to make a decision. He described the five technology streams of a connected enterprise with "frictionless information." s 0ROACTIVE To yield positive results, information has to go to the right person at the right time with zero effort. s "IG INSIGHT Enterprise systems need to provide information to people in a clear summarized fashion. Idaho Falls, Idaho-based Doug Andrus Trucking uses Mc- Leod's LoadMaster enterprise software with Vital Signs, a business intelligence dashboard designed to show company president Clay Murdock and other operations personnel for the 280-truck fleet where to focus their attention to reach daily goals. "It consumes you because you really want to know where you are at right now," Murdock says. "It's been a great asset." s -OBILE McLeod Software said it plans to take advantage of everything mobile and has developed a robust suite of applications for fleet managers and executives. s 7ORKmOW BEYOND BOUNDARIES To facilitate the movement of information inside and outside of the enterprise, McLeod Software created the Flow Logix workflow engine designed to allow users to configure decision trees to create an automated process for getting information where it needs to go. s #ONNECTABLE ARCHITECTURE A connected enterprise must have a service-oriented archi- tecture that allows it to integrate easily with external systems and develop or add new applications rapidly, McLeod said. MAKING THE LATEST TECHNOLOGY DEVELOPMENTS WORK FOR YOUR FLEET BY AARON HUFF technology AARON HUFF is Senior Editor of Commercial Carrier Journal. E-mail ahuff@ccjmagazine.com or call 385-225-9472. MEANINGFUL DATA: Connections aren't worth much unless the right information is moved. REDUCING FRICTION: The right information gets to the right person faster. TECHNOLOGY STREAMS: Mobility and big insight seem to be the most addicting. Follow the streams McLeod Software charts the course to a 'connected enterprise' At McLeod Software's annual user conference, company president Tom McLeod described the five technology streams of a connected enterprise with "frictionless information."