Over the last decade most Courier and Final Mile companies have made the transition of moving their dispatching systems onto the cloud. This was done by either purchasing an off-the shelf Software as a Service (SaaS) System or by migrating their proprietary system onto the cloud.

But a lot has changed in the cloud.

First Traditional Clouds Limitations.

Traditional cloud-based dispatching systems, whether they are SaaS or proprietary, rely on purchasing and maintaining a few servers in one or two data centers. But that is very limiting.

A good example is security and certification. Smaller cloud-based systems as described above rely on small teams of 1 or 2 people keeping such a system secure. Rarely do such teams have the time and resources available to have their cloud system ISO or government certified. This limits their customer, you, on what services you can provide. Therefore limiting the number of contracts you can fulfil.

Speed of scalability is another great example of how traditional cloud can be limiting. The ability to quickly pivot is why so many companies have survived since March of 2020. Companies need the ability to quickly scale up…and down. Without having to wait for their SaaS provider or their IT Team to purchase, set up and implement a new server.

The final example is the ability of old cloud systems to keep up with technology and changes. Cloud is more than just storing data on multiple servers located off site. It should also include the middle layer of code that lies between the database and client. What we call the business logic of a system. Traditional cloud is very limiting in its business logic scope. For example, for SaaS providers to add Artificial Intelligence, they must create the framework from the ground up. This is very time consuming, expensive, and tedious.

What’s new with the Cloud

Move over SaaS, it is now all about Platform as a service (PaaS).

PaaS is a complete development and infrastructure environment in the cloud. With resources that enable the ability to deliver everything from simple apps to sophisticated enterprise applications. PaaS includes infrastructure – servers, storage and networking – and also middleware aka the business logic.

_{source: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-ca/overview/what-is-paas/}

A good example of a PaaS is Amazon Web Services (AWS) or Microsoft’s Azure. I will use Azure to explain the benefits of having your dispatch system hosted on a PaaS.

Remember, as you read through this article, a modern SaaS Dispatching system can and should be built upon a modern PaaS system.

Security

When an existing dispatching system provider uses a system like Azure, they move away from a small one or two person team who oversee and maintain a few servers. They move to a much larger system overseen by thousands of highly skilled employees. Which uses millions of servers located all around the world.

For example, Microsoft’s Azure System has over 4 million servers located in 200 datacenters. Which is overseen by over 3,500 security experts who monitor and safeguard the system.

Certification

But what does that mean for you and your company?

Your dispatching system running on Azure’s platform provides your company with ISO and Government Certification. For example:

1. For security, you have IS0 27001 Certification for Information Security Management Standards
2. Are you delivering Healthcare shipments? HITRUSH, a certifiable framework to help healthcare organizations and their providers demonstrate their security and compliance in a consistent and streamlined manner.
3. Or even better, HIPAA Certification.  The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) and the regulations issued under HIPAA are a set of US healthcare laws that, among other provisions, establish requirements for the use, disclosure, and safeguarding of protected health information (PHI).
4. For more security, you can have CIS Benchmarks which are configuration baselines and best practices for securely configuring a system
5. More Azure certification can be found here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/compliance/

Beyond your own piece of mind, these certifications allow you to go to market with a dispatching system that is certified as secure, allowing you to close those more lucrative contracts. It also future proofs you for when, not if, these certifications become industry standard.

For security, PaaS means that the older cloud system running your current dispatch system is replaced with customized hardware that has security controls integrated into the hardware and firmware components with added protections against threats such as DDoS.

And it has next level security with A.I. monitoring actionable insights by analyzing vast sources of data including 18 billion Bing web pages, 400 billion emails, 1 billion Windows device updates and 450 billion monthly authentications.

Speed of Scalability

For scalability, PaaS’s massive number of servers and datacenters mean with a few keystrokes your dispatching system can quickly pivot as fast as your business needs.  

Even better, this upgrade can happen in an automated fashion.

Imagine it’s the holiday season and the sheer number of shipments you must deliver grows exponentially. You are too busy scrambling for drivers and trucks to worry if your dispatching system can handle the extra volume. The good news is that a PaaS, like Azure, can see the extra load and will just upgrade you onto a more powerful system automatically.

Business Logic

The final and most important piece is PaaS allows your dispatching system to not only keep up with changes in technology but makes you a leader. A PaaS like Azure provides a prebuilt ecosystem for Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. If you want an AI system that can help with dispatching, it is faster, easier and more powerful to create this for your dispatching software on a system like Azure.

Now is the time to ask your existing dispatch system providers if they use their own cloud-based system or do they operate using a PaaS system like Microsoft’s Azure. It will help you pivot, stay secure and keep up with needed technology.

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Barcodes are just Morse Code

If you want to know even more about barcodes, then take a moment to read my previous blog, “How do Barcodes Work” where I explain how barcodes were invented.

The Basics.

If you don’t have time to read the linked blog, I will break it down this way; when you scan a barcode the device translates the image into numbers and letters.

For example, if you scan this barcode:

you will see the number, “1”.

If you scan this barcode:

you will see the letter, “a”.

If you put them together into a single barcode:

you see “1a”.

Great, so how does this help with scanning a package?

Imagine you had an Excel sheet with a list of packages. Each row listed a package’s pick-up address, delivery address, weight and piece count.

Then you assign a unique name to each package, for example “package1” and “package2”. Your Excel sheet looks like this:

This would allow you to quickly find a package by using the “Find” button in Excel and typing in a package name, for example “package1”.

Putting that all together, we can:

1. Make a barcode that translates to “package1”
2. Stick our barcode onto our shipment.
3. Click the “Find” button in Excel.
4. Scan the barcode
5. Which translates to “Package1”
6. Click “Find”
7. And we find our package.

Now that we have selected our package, we can update it by changing its “status” field from “dispatched” to “picked up” or “delivered.”

Essentially, when you break down all the fancy computer code, that’s what’s happening when you scan a shipment.

They key take away is: if you don’t have “Package1” listed as a name in your Excel sheet, you will not find anything when you scan “Package1”. That means all the barcodes on all your shipments must also be in your database and they must be unique for each shipment.

Locations and Chain of Custody

For those who need proof that a shipment has been delivered to the right address, then location barcodes can also be used and they are just as simple.

In our example Excel Sheet we see “Bobs Work” as a delivery address.

All we have to do is make a barcode that translates to “Bobs Work” and stick this by Bob’s loading dock.

When we scan the location barcode and click “Find” we can then see that “Package3” is for delivery at that Bob’s Work.

We can then add another scan for the Package Name. If anything other than a barcode that translates to “Package3” is scanned, we will simply say: “Not for this location”.

Advanced Scanning

Now that we have the basics all sorted, its time for some fun stuff. This is usually where my conversation starts with clients.

How do you scan a barcode such that it magically creates a shipment record in the software?

It’s actually very simple: you just do everything backwards.

First, you scan the location barcode and that tells you the delivery address.

Then you scan the package name barcode which tells you the unique package name.

With those 2 pieces of information, your system creates a new shipment using the matched delivery address and unique package name.

While this works most of time, I’m sure you can see some failings. What about the shipment’s pick-up address, weight, piece count, customer account, etc.

We have two options. One is some coding magic, but that’s a secret. The other is to use a different type of barcode.

Here is a “traditional” Picket Fence barcode that contains the pick-up address, delivery address, weight and piece count.

That’s just way too long for a scanner to read. If we add a street address and customer account details the barcode would not fit on our package.

One solution is QR barcodes.

Picket Fence barcodes are read horizontally from left to right, just like reading a book. Thats why when we add more information the barcode gets bigger

QR barcodes are read horizontally and vertically.

For example, here is a QR Barcode

This barcode contains:

1. Full pick-up address details, including street, state, country and postal/zip
2. Full delivery address details, including street, state, country and postal/zip
3. Weight
4. Piece count
5. Customer account details.

That means you could scan a QR barcode and create a shipment that doesn’t even exist in your database, which would then allow you to properly track and trace your shipment.

Its magic.

Watch IDS scan a Barcode to Deliver a Shipment

If you want to see how IDS scans a barcode to deliver a shipment click here to see and read more.

If you found this blog helpful, feel free to subscribe by completing the form in the menu on the right hand side and you will receive future blogs as they become available.  

The post How does Scanning a Barcode Deliver a Shipment appeared first on Dispatch & Delivery Software with Routing and Drivers App.

July 22, 2009 to January 14, 2020

Did you know that on January 14, 2020, Microsoft will drop all support for Windows 7.  

Yet, according to Global Stats, as of June 2019, 31% of all Windows computers are still operating on Windows 7.

What will happen to all those Windows 7 computers on January 15, 2020?

According to Microsoft’s Official Website, “You can continue to use Windows 7, but once support ends, your PC will become more vulnerable to security risks. Windows will operate but you will stop receiving security and feature updates.”

You might think so what’s the big deal then?

According to AVTest The independent IT-Security Institute out of Germany over 350,000 new malicious programs are registered everyday!

That means by February 15, 2020, Windows 7 users will have little to no protection for over 9 million new malware and potentially unwanted applications (PUA).

After a year, that number rises to 127,750,000.

Hackers will be looking to exploit the lack of updates and will specifically attack Windows 7 computers.

It will also mean software and hardware developers will take Microsoft’s signal and stop providing updates and upgrades for Windows 7 users.

This will mean, not only will some of your software stop functioning properly, it also means your peripherals, like your GPU, Network Cards and your mouse may stop working.

If you are one of the holdouts, maybe its time consider upgrading. https://support.microsoft.com/en-ca/help/12435/windows-10-upgrade-faq

The post R.I.P. Windows 7 appeared first on Dispatch & Delivery Software with Routing and Drivers App.

You think you know, but really, do you?

This is the first in series of articles about Barcodes, how they work, innovative ways they are being used and what is next.

The Barcode

In 1948, Bernard Silver and Norman Joseph Woodland started research into creating a cash register that could read a product’s label and automatically enter in the correct price. The goal being to speed up and reduce errors during the check out process.

Their first challenge was how to make a product’s label “readable” for a machine.

To solve this, they used technology that was readily available to them in the 1940’s. That being the telegraph.

Before we could transmit our voice through radio waves, we transmitted tapping sounds over wires. The tapping was Morse Code and the machine that made the tapping sound was the Telegraph.

How that tapping or Morse Code worked was simple. If you made 3 quick taps, then 3 long taps and then 3 quick taps, you were saying S.O.S. Where 3 quick taps meant the letter S and 3 long taps meant the letter O.

These taps would be visually represented as dots and dashes. So our S.O.S would look like this:

Woodland’s brilliant idea was to turn Morse Code’s dots and dashing into lines which could then be “read” by a machine.

Using sand on the beach in front of his father’s Florida home, “I just extended the dots and dashes downwards and made narrow lines and wide lines out of them”, said Woodland (Seideman, Tony, “Barcodes Sweep the World”, Wonders of Modern Technology)

Meaning our Morse Code S.O.S. would now look like this:

But there was a problem.

Woodland and Silver realized that their new code would always have to be scanned straight on to ensure the scanner would read their code from left to right.

Meaning, if the code said “coke” and you scanned it upside down, then it would be read as “ekoc”.

Their solution was to create the Circular Barcode, which could be scanned from any angle.

Their Circular Barcodes was the Great Grandparent of the QA Barcode.

The Scanner

Now that Woodland and Silver had their barcode, they needed a way for a cash register to read it. So again, they turned to popular technology that was widely in used in the 40’s. That technology being movies.

When movies first came into being, they were silent. The challenge was how to add sound. The solution was to add the sound directly onto the edge of the film strip as an image of a sound wave.

When the projector shone light through the film onto the movie screen, it also illuminated the images of the sound waves. On the opposite side of the film strip edge was a Photomultiplier.

A Photomultiplier takes light particles, which are known as photons, and turns them into electrons.

As the photons projected through the images of the sound waves changed, then so did the electron flow produced by the Photomultiplier. This changing electron flow created an electric signal. The electric signal was then converted to sounds via an amplifier and a speaker system.

So when Woodland and Silver needed a way for a machine to read their barcodes, they simply adapted the movie sound technology. They did this by shinning a 500-watt light bulb through the barcode and onto a Photomultiplier. But instead of turning the created electronic signal into sound, they converted the signal back into the original letters and numbers of the barcode.

Putting it together

Now that we have a barcode and scanner, we need to put it together so that our cash register would charge the right price.

Imagine if we had a bottle of Coke. We then created a barcode using our converted Morse Code to spelled out the word, “Coke”. We then fastened our barcode onto our bottle.

We then connected our scanner to a computer and scanned our barcode.

The scanner reads the barcode and tells the computer, “Coke”.

The computer then looks up in its’ database the word “Coke”, finds a record that says a Coke costs $1.25 and then display’s on its monitor “Coke $1.25”.

And that’s the magic of barcoding.

But wait! we are not done yet.

We don’t use Morse Code for barcodes and the linear barcode became the standard.  But why?

In 1949 Woodland and Silver filed a patent for their barcode and scanner, which was granted in 1952. They then quickly sold their patent which ended up in the hands of RCA.

While they were waiting for their patent’s approval, and this is important, Woodland started working at IBM.

In 1966, RCA attended a meeting held by the National Association of Food Chains (NAFC) on how to create an automated check out system. The meeting resulted in an agreement to initiate an internal project to test Woodland and Silver’s barcode patent.

In July 1972, RCA and the Kroger Store in Cincinnati started an 18-month test of the Woodland and Silver’s circular barcode. Sadly, their test kept failing because when the printers created the circular barcode, the ink would smear which then made the barcodes unscannable.

Back at IBM, Woodland was still working on his original linear barcode. He discovered that linear barcodes wouldn’t smear because they were printed in the same direction as the stripes.  

But there was still the issue that linear barcodes could only be scanned from one direction.

Thankfully, Woodland’s colleague at IBM, George Laure, overcame this last hurdle by creating the following barcode format standard:

• The first digit was always a 0.
• The next 5 digits was the manufacturer code.
• Which was followed by 6 more digits for the product code
• With the final digit being a check digit to ensure the barcode was read correctly.

With the barcode always starting with a 0 and ending with a check digit, the scanner and computer always knew, regardless at what angle it was being scanned, which way to read the barcode.

Woodlands Linear Barcode combined with Laure’s format became IBM’s UPC (Universal Product Code) which on the April 3, 1973 was selected to be the NAFC standard.

IBM’s UPC is still widely used today as the standard for the retail industry. However, there are now countless number of other barcode formats in use today, such as EAN, Industrial, Interleaved, Standard, PostNet, Code 11, Codabar and QR Barcodes.

So now you know how barcodes work.

Watch IDS scan a shipping barcode

If you wish to learn more, please click here to watch IDS scan shipment.

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