Openforce Helps UST Logistical Dominate in Last Mile
With one million deliveries annually and approximately 1,000 team members in motion, UST Logistical Systems had a logistical obstacle on its hands when it came to efficiently onboarding its independent contracting drivers.
“We didn’t have the resources to know what was happening at all times. Visibility becomes an issue when you’re dealing with massive amounts of paperwork and cross referencing different systems. We were spending more time than we needed to on the constant churn of paperwork,” recalls Tekisha Roberts, UST’s compliance director, corporate team member and expert user.
That paperwork included a 25-page enrollment document and a 15-page contract that drivers often sent back to the company piecemeal over several days or weeks, leaving location managers with the task of putting it all together manually.
“Then our location managers would have all the other onboarding pieces in motion only to discover later that the independent contractor had dropped out of the process,” Roberts says. To make matters worse, the manual paperwork created the potential for human error — and required massive filing rooms to store it.
THE SOLUTION
For a company that specializes in the “final mile” of retailers’ furniture and appliance deliveries and prides itself on customer service, there had to be a better answer to this logistical problem. That’s when UST turned to Openforce and its ICM Power cloud-based solution, which handles all aspects of independent contractor management including:
- Onboarding
- Contracting
- Settlement processing
- Risk controls requirements
- Compliance audit
Initially, UST started with Openforce in 2014 and today has since grown its program substantially:
- Tripling locations with location-specific documentation
- Increasing active contractors
- Expanding client and supplemental documents
- Adding on-demand doc push workflows
- Distinguishing unique pay and expense types
Given what the Openforce systems have accomplished, it’s easy to see why UST expanded their use so dramatically and scaled. The technology platform:
- Automate a large pre-screening process with the ability to conduct background screening upfront, for both master and subcontractor (second driver)
- Present expenses for approval during the enrollment
- Establish best practices and compliance automation that align with the high standards of the company brand
SHIFTED FOCUS ON STRATEGY
“Once the Openforce system was in place, a major pressure point was released,” Roberts says. “We’re all looking at the same data — one version of truth consolidated in a single repository. The amount of paper eliminated alone was a huge benefit.”
Along with improving efficiency, the Openforce systems freed up time and staff to focus on more competitive concerns.
“This allows us to exercise our model and focus on our mission and customers,” Roberts says. “We are the broker that works with owner operators to fulfill the needs of the clients. The Openforce automated platform is completely worry free and we can focus our time on more strategic priorities.”
To download the full whitepaper, visit https://www.oforce.com/USTsuccess.
Openforce is the leading third-party administrator for independent contractors with over 350,000 owner operators properly contracted, insured and paid. Entire industries, like transportation and logistics are redefining the conventional models of work that fall short on cost, efficiency and meeting customer demand. Which is why from our cloud-based applications to our superior services, Openforce helps transportation leaders achieve more sustainable, profitable growth by removing financial, operational, and compliance barriers to getting business done. Learn more at www.oforce.com.
