Crown Data Systems News

Crown’s new Route Planning system has been released. This new addition to Crown's suite of products allows dispatchers to build, auto-route, and dispatch routes all from the new Crown X mapping system. Dispatchers can watch drivers work through their routes, monitor performance, anticipate problems, and avoid service failures. Route Planning also generates PD Manifests in CFM directly from the routes built.

Are you aware of Crown's built-in dims factor calculator? If not, you may be leaving money on the table.

With the recent surge in fuel prices, Crown customers have been inquiring about how to add a fuel surcharge by creating a fuel profile. Here are the steps:

We are pleased to announce that Crown's new generation of Maps is now live. Customers are now getting the benefit of a more modern, more robust, and more responsive new Maps system. Tracking trucks on driver routes and stops has never been easier. The new Maps software has been completely rewritten using new GIS technologies that operate as the platform for upcoming operational tools like Route Optimization (coming Q2 2022).

The new live Maps offers better ways to monitor operations, including the ability to create customized views and to filter shipments with attributes like surcharges.

A partner of Crown, PLC is a tech savvy company. PLC’s technological innovations were developed around the specific needs and requests of their customers. “Working with agents on the new Crown Connect 3 (CC3) platform is very efficient,” says Linda Witt, Director of National Service for PLC. “With a single login we can toggle between our Crown agents anywhere in the U.S. to view shipment status/PODs, Images, notes, and more. Adding the EDI 214’s, 211’s and 210’s makes it even better!"

"Given two agents in the same market, I will go with an agent offering CC3 and EDI every time,” adds Linda. “This is a new initiative to only partner with agents utilizing Crown software. We recently integrated with Crown via EDI and will be seeking these agents a lot more.”

Ted Dennis has joined the Crown Data Systems team as Vice President of Customer Experience. Ted has an extensive background leading technical service organizations, most recently as the Vice President of Operations for designDATA -- a managed service provider in the Washington, D.C. metro area.

As V.P. of Customer Experience at Crown, Ted will be responsible for developing and executing service strategies to enhance the quality of service and communication with Crown's customers. His initial focus will be on identifying and implementing structured processes and reporting in support of onboarding and technical support activities.

The Crown Freight Manager system utilizes three main date values for AR reporting: Shipment Date, Invoice Date and Payment Date. These values correspond with billing and management based reports and are used to calculate revenue for periods.

While Payment Date is generally siloed, Shipment Date and Invoice Date can sometimes conflict. An example of this would be when processing invoices with shipments crossing two periods.

• A CFM user moves shipments on 11/28 from the Review Screen to the Billing Screen: The CFM system creates an invoice with the date [11/28]
• Additional shipments are moved over the subsequent four days: 11/29, 11/30, 12/1, 12/2
• When printing invoices on the following day, the CFM user sets the invoice date to 12/3

As a member of the Air & Expedited Motor Carrier Association (AEMCA), Crown will be exhibiting at the upcoming AirCargo Conference 2022 in New Orleans, January 17-19.

Each year the AirCargo Conference brings together all players in the air cargo supply chain in one location to discuss trends, challenges, opportunities and the future of air cargo industry. Airlines, airport authorities, freight forwarders, truckers and expediting companies, along with the vendors who support them, are all in one place.

Crown is proud to exhibit with this dynamic group. We hope to see you there!

For more information about the conference, click here: AirCargo Conference 2022

We are pleased to announce Kevin Hady’s promotion to Business Development Manager. Kevin has been an integral part of the Crown team for over 5 years. During his tenure, Kevin has been highly successful in his role as a Regional Sales Manager, proving himself to be a loyal advocate for the company.

Kevin first came to Crown Data Systems after graduating from Wofford College where he studied business and played Division 1 soccer. He was recently engaged and will be married in December of this year. Kevin's extensive experience with Crown gives him the insight into how to maximize customer satisfaction--and the knowledge on how to increase partnerships, to help improve our users’ experience while helping our customers continue to automate processes.

Please join us in congratulating Kevin on his new position

In today’s competitive environment sending and receiving shipment data electronically to and from your customers, and other 3rd party systems, has never been more important. Crown E-services is a platform that connects Crown products to other third-party systems for real-time data exchange, with the goal of eliminating manual entry and reducing error. The platform has been created to address the many different types of electronic communications taking place today and to adapt to new opportunities in the future. In the past, all electronic communication between Crown users and their shipping customers was limited to EDI communications. The E-services platform now includes API communications, which we expect to grow within the industry, and possibly replace EDI as the foundation of data communications with Crown's software. Today’s E-services platform includes shipment data communications with freight forwarder partners, Crown-to-Crown communications between Crown users and usage of our Crown Connect 3 online Quoting, Booking and Tracking Portal.

E-Services continues to rely more and more on our Dataflow technology (announced last year), for more rapid and reliable exchanges of data between your Crown software and other systems. It is all about connectivity!

To receive the complete PDF of the Crown E-Services Platform, please click here and request your copy from a member of our sales team: Crown Sales Team

How can you expand your service territory without taking on the costs of a new facility, new vehicles, and added personnel? A couple of Crown customers show the way.

Air Support, Inc. (PHX, TUS, OLS) and Fastrucking (SAN, LAX, IPL, YUM, PHX, TUS, OLS, ABQ, ELP, LRD) have partnered, under the name Straightline, to do just that. Leveraging Crown-to-Crown E-services, Straightline efficiently joins their service areas of Southern California and Arizona via electronic shipment and status communications. Their customers benefit from the larger service geography and single point of contact Straightline is able to provide.

With Crown-to-Crown E-service, Fastrucking and Air Support are sending electronic pick-up and delivery electronic alerts to each other and receive electronic acceptances back. While each company's freight is in transit, their partner receives statuses like Recovered and Transferred on pick-ups and On-Hand and Out for Delivery and POD on deliveries, automatically and in real time. Electronic document images--including signatures--are sent between the companies through Crown-to-Crown E-services as well.

SOFTWARE INTEGRATION

FreightSnap's full line of freight dimensioning products now seamlessly integrates with Crown's offerings. Out-of-the-box communication between the two systems ensures a quick and painless process when adding a Dimensioner to your operation.

Automating the dimensioning process with a FreightSnap Dimensioner and floor scale, integrated with Crown, saves time and money. No more time-consuming and error-prone manual data entry of DIM weights. You will also have access to high-resolution images of every piece of freight that will prove to be highly valuable when disputes arise.

Start seeing the benefits from the first day! Please contact [email protected] for more information.

If you have not already migrated to Crown's new shipment tracking and customer service portal, you will want to do so as soon as possible. Crown Connect 3 is built using the latest web technologies and is on our secure Microsoft Azure platform for reliability and security. It is a significant improvement compared to Crown Connect 2 and will give your customers a friendlier, better experience.

Crown Connect 3 aims to lighten your customer service workload, including taking care of shipment quotes. Put CC3 to use today and let us know how we can improve it and help your company at the same time.

Crown Connect 3 includes a Quick Track Widget as a standard and a Quick Quote Widget for CC3 Quoting and Booking subscribers. These widgets get embedded in your website and allow any visitor to get live shipment and quote information. The widgets can be styled to match your site exactly. You can add to your company's service offerings and let Crown update and maintain the features you offer.

As a member of the Air & Expedited Motor Carrier Association, Crown will be exhibiting at the upcoming AirCargo Conference 2019 in Las Vegas, NV.

Each year the AirCargo Conference brings together all players in the air cargo supply chain in one location to discuss trends, challenges, opportunities and the future of air cargo industry. Airlines, airport authorities, freight forwarders, truckers and expediting companies, along with the vendors who support them, are all in one place.

Crown is proud to exhibit with this dynamic group. We hope to see you there!

For more information about the AirCargo Conference 2019, click here: https://www.aircargoconference.com

Crown hosted its third Users Conference in September. Customers from across the country attended the event held in Atlanta and exchanged ideas, expanded their Crown-system knowledge base and networked with industry peers. The two-day conference, designed around the theme Knowledge = Power, provided attendees with a multitude of business-strengthening sessions such as “How to Get Paid” through the billing process, “Industry Trends” and their impact, and “How to Generate New Business Opportunities through Crown (C2C)”.

Attendee feedback indicated that this is a must-attend Crown event for most, with comments ranging from “Great conference with so much information that is helpful” to “Overall, great year. I have come the last 3 years and I feel this year was the best year.”

Thank you to all attendees who joined us, many for the third consecutive conference!

Crown held its second Users Conference last month in Atlanta. Long-term and new customers attended from all over the country to learn how to maximize their Crown systems and network with their peers.

The highly successful two-day event centered around the theme of "Optimizing Performance," specifically addressing topics such as KPI (Key Performance Indicators) Monitoring, Getting the Most out of your System, EDI/API New Trends, Dock Manager, Leveraging Crown to Crown for New Business Opportunities, and Future Outlook.

In addition to the all-day and half-day sessions held at the hotel venue, attendees enjoyed a kick-off cocktail reception on Sunday night and a Monday night group dinner where old industry friends reunited and new friends were made.

The Crown Data Systems User’s Conference is centered around your business – how to save you money and time while improving communication and metrics. Informative and solutions-based sessions will help you find ways to increase your company’s workflow, speed and accuracy – the most important factors driving revenue in today’s technology minded market.

Here you will find many opportunities to expand your business and network with a system of forwarders and business owners from across the country. We will create an environment that encourages conversation, problem solving and productivity.

We have revamped the sessions for this year’s event, aiming for shorter presentations with more time for attendee input and inquiries. We will also have a separate technology space available to access during breaks and sessions where attendees can try out the latest Crown products, from the Dock Manager to Crown Mobile.

There are dozens of important items and details to consider when looking to purchase a software package for your air freight trucking company. Measuring the pros and cons of each software option can be overwhelming, leaving you up in the air as to which air freight software is going to be best for your business.

So why should you choose Crown Data Systems? Having been in business for almost 20 years, Crown knows the ins and outs of the industry. In fact, our software package was initially designed for our owner’s own air freight trucking company – meaning we know exactly how your business works and what software solutions we can provide to help it run more efficiently.

Need more convincing? Check out the top five reasons why you should trust your air freight trucking business to the software solutions provided by Crown Data Systems.

In this story, we’re going to look at two Air Freight trucking companies: ABC Logistics, and XYZ Cartage. Both companies use the Crown Freight Manager and Crown Document Manager systems. Both companies have been running the Crown software for 5 years and use Quickbooks server edition for their accounting software.

ABC Logistics and XYZ Cartage run their systems on individual Windows Servers, which are maintained and updated by local IT contractors. Their networks are protected by firewalls and antivirus software and their CFM6 and Quickbooks databases are regularly backed up on the server.

The difference between ABC Logistics and XYZ Cartage lies in their disaster recovery plans.

The usage of EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) in the air freight industry has dramatically increased over the past several years. Why? An impressive reduction in data entry, streamlined communication and reduced costs in the day to day activities of your business.

 A simple definition of EDI is a method of providing a common “language” for a company’s computer system to “talk” to another company’s computer system. The primary type of messages that are taking place in the industry include EDI 204/211 (electronic inbound alerts), EDI 214 (shipment event status updates and proof of delivery) and EDI 210 (electronic invoicing).

Shippers are wanting to send and receive scanned images of the paperwork via EDI. Receiving the airbills into Crown via EDI opens the door for sending an image of the paperwork to the driver application, Crown Mobile, for a consignee’s signature using a stylus. While EDI evolved around rigid standards, today most of the EDI messages are tweaked to meet the needs of the industry. The primary framework for communicating between a freight forwarders system and a ground trucking agent are FTP, Web API or XML.