Green Your Business Makes Dollars and Cents

Is your business green? We've been hearing that question more often lately and seeing it in RFQ's. Many manufacturers, distribution centers and other companies are now giving preference to vendors that have implemented green initiatives to reduce paper waste, energy consumption and carbon emissions; and the number of companies demanding that their transportation carriers be SmartWay certified by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is growing. For a freight company all of these initiatives are important issues and PEI recently began its own green initiative. When you take a look at each of these issues independently and consider what steps your business can take to green your company you quickly realize that going green is not only good for our environment it also makes dollars and cents.

Paper Reduction and Recycling - Freight carriers consume a large amount of paperwork including multi-part bill of ladings, shipping manifests, delivery receipts and invoices. When PEI took a hard look at our internal processes we realized that the combination of making small modifications to those processes, systems consolidation and integration and advances in technology could go a long way in helping PEI reach its long time goal of being a paperless freight carrier.

While it is realistically impossible for any business to achieve a 100 percent paperless work environment, PEI has made great strides in this direction. Beginning with the origin of a shipment PEI encourages our customers to utilize our on-line order entry and shipment tracking application. Utilization of our on-line tools has reduced a six-part freight bill of lading per shipment to an electronic freight bill of lading requiring only one receipt page to be printed, and in the case of multiple shipments one manifest to be printed covering all shipments tendered. In 2008 PEI began a campaign to convert our customers from paper invoices to e-invoices and that initiative has been greatly received. PEI also offers EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) invoicing and accepts ACH (Automated Clearing House) invoice payments, therefore completely eliminating the need for paper invoices and paper checks.

Making modifications to our internal processes and utilizing the power of technology PEI has dramatically reduced the amount of paperwork needed to transport a shipment, communicate freight status updates to customers, invoicing and collections. Not only has PEI been able to drastically reduce the amount of paperwork required to transport shipments but we also recycle the paperwork that we do produce. Beyond the obvious cost savings of postage and paper supplies there are other cost savings realized as a result of a paper reduction initiative. These include reductions in printing costs of paper forms, copy paper, toner supplies, increased life cycle of office equipment and the increased efficiencies of e-invoices and EDI transactions greatly reduce labor costs. Bringing it all together and starting a paper reduction and recycling initiative for your business just makes dollars and cents.