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National Air Cargo

National Air Cargo's business is predicated on the ability to ship anything you want anywhere in the world in nearly any timeframe imaginable. From automobiles to weapon systems; trade show booths to brochures; spare parts to aircraft wings. With no weight or size restrictions and next day, 2nd day, deferred or even same day service, NAC needed an enterprise solution that allowed them to manage all their assets as well as their customers.

Scenario

NAC accepted shipment requests from customers by phone or a Microsoft Access application that uploaded orders daily. Customers liked answering their own questions using the application and quickly escalating large shipments. NAC started investigating alternatives when they found the costs of deployment and support high, while their customer list grew and grew.

How Algonquin Solved It

Algonquin Studios delivered Web Accuship, a web site for customers to login, quote shipments, arrange pickups and consolidate shipments. NAC staff provision customers and their rating tables through their own application. Algonquin worked with NAC to integrate Accuship with NAC's enterprise shipment management system, accelerating shipments. During this project, Algonquin Studios also helped to streamline NAC's rating algorithm. The new algorithm makes calculating shipment costs based on level of service, item(s) being shipped, point of origin and destination, as well as optional shipment factors easier than ever.

Algonquin Studios used Microsoft Windows 2000, Internet Information Server, Active Server Pages, COM+ components and SQL Server 2000 to create the custom web-based application.

Result

National Air Cargo has shaken up the heavy shipping industry, by eliminating deployment costs at customer sites and increasing responsiveness to customers. Web Accuship is a strategic advantage for NAC.

We also designed their General Website. Go visit the site yourself...

An image of the win32 application internal staff uses to manage clients, shipments, and resources. It talks with the same enterprise system that drives information on the customer site.

An image of the web site that customers use to manage their shipments. This screen allows customers to generate reports directly from the live database.

The customer web site can even be used by remote staff to get status reports on client shipments. Because this enterprise system can be deployed through more than one interface, it makes it much more flexible.