I received an e-mail from Buddy Myers, one of our field sales guys, asking the following which I know has been on a lot of people’s minds. I have spoken to a few Agency Managers about this but I thought it would be a good topic to cover publicly.
Chris,
We have been asked by several prospective agents about posting the settlements on the website… Do you see this anytime in the future??
The short answer is, Of course. I, personally, feel that the more data and information we can make accessible to the Agency Managers, the more efficient and thus more successful they can be. We are all on the same team and anything we can do to make each other’s jobs easier or better is definitely worth it.
I have also spoken to a few Agency Managers about providing some revenue reporting via the website. Having the ability to see gross amounts, top customers and comparing this week to last (week, month, year) would be a huge tool. This is also highly active on our radar.
There is one thing standing in our way: Time. These tools take time to develop, build, test correctly. But we are working as fast and as we can to create new tools and features for our company. That’s why I wanted to give you a quick view down the road at what we are working on and what is to come.
First, as early as this week, I will be releasing the second part of the Online Credit Application. This will be specifically geared toward Agency Managers and will aim to replace the one-page “Request for Credit Approval” fax sheet that we are currently using. It will essentially be the same fields, however, it will provide an instant submit and we will maintain a database of every request, so there is no chance of a fax not going through, or any other hiccups in getting these submitted and acted upon. Also, if you provide an e-mail address to the customer, the site can automatically send an e-mail request with a link to complete the Full Online Credit Application already live on the site.
Planned for our 10.14 release (week of April 5th) is the Terminal Revenue Reporting feature. As these are based on a fairly simple data set, essentially invoices, it will give us an excellent way to begin the merge of Express data with Wall Street Online. These reports will show data over any date interval from any given day to a span of the entire terminal’s history with Wall Street. Agency Managers will also be able breakdown by customer and drill down to each invoice, as well as see the outstanding balance of each invoice.
After that we will implement the big project for the first half of 2010, Full Online Log Tracking and import of Payroll data into Wall Street Online. The Log Tracking will provide the Agency Managers access to the exact same information that the Log Department uses. This means exactly which logs were received, which were shown to be false, missing, etc. We will also be able to provide automatic e-mail alerts when a driver is in danger of being far enough behind to warrant a check hold directly to the Agency Manager, or driver, if his e-mail address is provided. The second side of this project is the automatic import of payroll data from Express to Wall Street Online. In the very beginning, this will only be the net check amount. We need this data to load the EFS cards each week. Currently, Wall Street Online interfaces with EFS, but we have to manually enter the net check amounts into Wall Street Online. After we have the net check amount, our goal is to expand that information and have the entire Driver Settlements available online to the Agency Managers and Drivers. We also want to give access to the history of Settlements for tax or other purposes.
The question that always comes up is security and access of information. Before we put any detailed payroll information on the web, we will switch to the https secure protocol. We already use encryption algorithms on sensitive data (SSNs, etc.) we will extend this to all future sensitive data. As far as access, only the required persons will be able to access any data. You will notice now that the application list, driver list, and log hold list only shows drivers for your specific terminal. This system will continue. Corporate Employees are only given access to areas specific to their responsibilities, Agency Managers are given access to only their drivers, and Drivers are only able to see their own information. This not only provides security but reduces the clutter and noise for everyone.
We’ve got our work cut out for us. Better get to it. Please post any questions in the comments, or e-mail me.
–Chris
