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New Product IDM Delivers the Shortest Route to Lower Costs

The international Implico Group today announced that it has developed a new software solution for intelligent tour planning and dispatching. Called IDM (Integrated Dispatch Management), the SAP-based software makes it possible to coordinate customer orders and resources in a way that ensures the best possible use of personnel and vehicle capacities. IDM takes a wealth of constraints into account, such as delivery schedules, breaks or priorities. The solution enables trading and logistics companies to cut transport costs, save time and improve customer service. IDM is expected to be available from January 2011.

Efficient dispatching is critical for business success. Optimum tour planning shortens drive times, cuts the number of kilometers traveled and ensures full resource utilization. In a challenging market environment, intelligent transport planning offers a number of key advantages: It can be used to balance out increasing time pressure, ever-greater distances and rising personnel and fuel costs – and thus increase margins. This is exactly what the IDM planning solution from consulting and software company Implico delivers.

With IDM, companies can plan tours intelligently and directly within the SAP landscape. Thanks to the integration of on-board units and telematics systems, data is also transmitted back from the vehicle fleet, so that planned tours can be optimized in real-time. It all adds up: IDM can generate savings of up to 15% on transport costs and accelerate dispatch planning by up to 80%. In addition, the improved transparency and response capabilities resulting from optimized planning also enhance customer service. Companies are able to process newly-received orders at short notice and make reliable statements about delivery dates.

Innovative functionalities

SAP partner Implico has developed IDM’s innovative functionalities in collaboration with numerous companies from the transportation and logistics sector. Features available using the add-on include automatically taking into account a host of parameters during tour planning, including customer and supplier master data, details of vehicles, depots and terminals, working hours or special equipment needed for loading and unloading.

In addition, the solution also supports a number of planning scenarios, such as shifts, one-day/multi-day tours or depot-to-depot delivery. Companies can also specify the exact level of support they need from the system. Possibilities include manual, semi-automated and fully-automated calculation.

Seamless communication

With IDM, dispatchers plan directly from within SAP. Manual data transfer or time-consuming interface configuration is thus a thing of the past. Instead, companies benefit from seamless, rapid and secure communication between the dispatching application, the SAP ERP system (from Version 6.0) and other SAP applications, such as SAP Oil & Gas Secondary Distribution (SAP OGSD). Thanks to the seamless integration, companies can track all of their tours and the corresponding orders in their SAP system, including the assigned vehicle resources and the sequence of stops en route. Follow-on documents can be generated automatically.

In addition, the OPTEngine plug-in from Implico’s partner OPTITOOL can be used to create fully-automated transport optimization at the touch of a button. The plug-in takes more than 200 constraints into account, calculating the most economical transport routes from the available in-house/third-party resources and upcoming orders.

For more information, please visit www.implico.com.