Freight Goes Faster with Digital Documents

Crossroads

Who

who

Crossroads 3PL Solutions, LLC is a company of ten employees located in Temple, Texas. A group that started off working with the Texas cotton industry has, over the past one hundred years, grown into a thriving, comprehensive diversified logistics company and a leader in warehousing and shipping in Texas. Crossroads 3PL handles air and land delivery all over the United States while also providing door-to-door shipping across Texas.

With a rapidly growing economy and business in various sectors including natural resources, manufacturing, technology, and others, Crossroads 3PL provides “comprehensive logistics, warehousing, multimodal shipping and custom freight solutions,” said Kimberly Ford, a financial controler with the company. As financial controller, Ford is responsible for the the financial operations of the company, performing financial analysis and strategy.

The company “sits at the intersection of strategic railroad and highway systems and is a mission critical gateway to high growth Texas markets,” she added. Placing an emphasis on relationships and dealing with clients of all sizes, Crossroads 3PL is committed to providing excellent service.

The Problem

Crossroads 3PL had a simple problem with significant consequences. Without any sort of digital document solution, they were left to complete all their forms by hand. “We hand wrote [information] into forms then had to scan them in a file,” said Ford. It was costing the company’s employees time and energy, affecting workflow and impacting the ability of the company to work as efficiently as possible.

Moreover, Crossroads 3PL needed to add signatures to state and Federal documents. While this could easily be accomplished by hand, there was no obvious digital solution.

All the paper was adding up — “we hate using paper, we love trees,” Ford said. And so, in search of a digital solution to an anachronistic paper-based problem, she turned to PDFfiller.

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The Solution

It was “very easy to transition [to PDFfiller] after the small training/learning curve,” said Ford. And now that Crossroads 3PL has gone digital they have consolidated their workflow, making it faster and easier to complete, store, and distribute documents.

Now, about a third of the staff of Crossroads 3PL use PDFfiller on a weekly basis for all sorts of forms, but specifically State of Texas carrier forms and Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission forms. “We use it to fill in all template forms and for signatures that need to be verified,” Ford said.

Going digital with all your documents is easy with PDFfiller. All Crossroads 3PL has to do is add forms to PDFfiller, either by downloading them from the internet or uploading scans of paper documents. Once integrated into PDFfiller’s easy-to-use online service, Crossroads 3PL staff can type directly onto them, changing font color, size, and style as necessary.

Using PDFfiller’s proprietary LinkToFill feature, users can make forms fillable by adding specific fields using a simple drag-and-drop wizard and then send them to others directly. They can then be easily completed and returned in the click of a mouse. Using the same drag-and-drop wizard, it’s also easy to make templates to save time when filling in the same form multiple times. The “ease of use for filling in templates… makes [completing forms] so much easier,” Ford said.

Adding legally-binding electronic signatures to digital forms is simple. Just upload your digital signature into your PDFfiller account by taking a picture of it or by drawing it with your mouse or on the screen of your mobile device. Afterwards, in just a click, you can add a digital signature to any document. Moreover, with PDFfiller’s SendToSign feature, you can send a digital document for eSignature to up to 20 customers or clients; they can sign it and return it instantly. After the document has been completed, you will be notified immediately. “[PDFfiller] is an absolute MUST for signing documents,” said Ford.

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A digital document solution brings with it the ability to transmit documents instantly, improving the communication speed of fast-moving companies. “We often have situations where multiple employees must sign and fill out State documents,” said Ford. And “PDF filler makes it easy and quick to route the document to those who need it,” allowing a user to distribute it in just a click and even assign the order in which a document is signed. A digital solution means that Crossroads 3PL can drastically decrease the time it takes to add signatures to documents and improve their speed of business.

When sending signed State and Federal documents, security was critical for Crossroads 3PL. With two factor authentication, PIN-protected folders, and redundant digital backups on always-on secure servers, your digital documents are safer than a paper-based alternative and available whenever and wherever you need them.

And, by going digital, not only does Crossroads 3PL improve the efficiency of their workflow, making their document management process faster and easier, they also minimize their environmental impact, which was, said Ford, “the main reason why as the controller, I chose PDFfiller.

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Conclusion

PDFfiller has “saved us a tremendous amount of time,” said Ford and “did everything we needed it to do,” from editing PDFs to adding digital signatures and distributing forms.

Because it’s “easy to use and much faster and more accurate than hand-filling documents,” PDFfiller has facilitated an improvement in Crossroads 3PL’s workflow, improving the company’s ability to move documents around the office, add signatures, and fill in forms. “I can’t think of a single reason why any company would not be using this program,” Ford said.

conclusion

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