Drivers at Beeken Transport und Logistik receive their orders and the relevant documents on Android tablets, easily managed by Cortado MDM.
Beeken Transport und Logistik is a mid-sized company with unique experience in port logistics. Ninety logistics employees work at two locations in northern Germany in the warehouse, transport, and administration areas.
In the past, drivers at Beeken had to come to the warehouse every morning to pick up their dispatch orders and documents. However, this has changed since spring 2020.
Since then, drivers receive their dispatch orders remotely. Four things were required to make this possible:
- Suitable mobile devices.
- The right apps.
- An MDM solution to manage the devices and distribute the apps.
- Drivers also need printers in their vehicles as in many cases, they still need paper documentation.
When selecting hardware, Beeken project manager Ulf Kaiser opted for Samsung tablets running the Android operating system. Among other things, the company uses software for port logistics and mail-order business from SysIng. In addition, a browser, a mail system, several PDF viewers, a lean route planning system, and additional logistics software from a terminal operator are on the devices. When it came to deciding on an MDM system, the company selected Cortado MDM. The solution manages the drivers’ devices and rolls out apps directly to the devices. If devices are lost, they can be deleted remotely.
Battery-powered Epson printers are used as printers. “Our drivers sometimes need copies of documents or have to have something signed. That’s where printers are indispensable,” says Ulf Kaiser.
Some of the older drivers were initially reluctant to use the tablets. But all in all, Ulf Kaiser reports, it went quite well. It was important to keep the entire system lean so that it would be easy to use.
At first, he had to familiarize himself with the Cortado MDM setup. Somewhere he had put a checkmark in the wrong place for rights distribution, so the system didn’t work the way he wanted it to, but that was quickly cleared up. Ulf Kaiser said: “It just works. I don’t have to do anything more with it. The tablets are running, the software is running, Cortado is running.” Setting up printing was not so trivial. That was a challenge, he says. But here, too, the initial difficulties have now been overcome, he says.
Overall, he is satisfied with his digitization project. Drivers now receive their routes and papers on the road. The company now responds to changes caused by traffic jams or waiting times at port terminals of up to three hours in a completely different and far more flexible way. This ultimately benefits the company’s drivers and customers alike.
Ulf Kaiser sums up:
Workflows have been significantly improved, the workload for the dispatching team has been reduced, and unnecessary routes have been eliminated. You save fuel and you save time. We would never go back to the situation we had before.
