3 Ways to Integrate Your Disparate Systems

In a complex and competitive market, most waste and recycling businesses are looking to increase efficiency. If you are currently operating multiple, disparate systems however, you may struggle to operate at peak efficiency. One way to improve productivity is to streamline your operations with a fully integrated solution.

Disparate systems reduce efficiency

Waste and recycling operations are logistically challenging, involving multiple processes, often with different software, hardware, and technology systems. These could include:

• billing systems
• account management/CRM systems
• scale house
• inventory management
• dispatching
• route planning
• container tracking
• customer payment channels

When these disparate systems do not work together seamlessly, operations can slow down dramatically.

Perhaps you manage separate dispatch and container tracking systems? Maybe you have spreadsheets for scale reporting that don’t communicate directly with the scale house, or paper route sheets that don’t communicate with those in the field?

Wherever information is siloed in this way, frustration rises for both customers and employees, with billing errors and service issues becoming commonplace.

So, how could an integrated system boost efficiency for waste and recycling providers?

Gain visibility into your waste and recycling operations

Operational, financial and performance data helps waste and recycling companies to manage services effectively and profitably. For those operating disparate systems, however, it can be difficult to successfully gather information from multiple software systems to create meaningful reports.

Replacing separate operating systems with a single integrated solution addresses this issue head on. Solutions such as AMCS Platform enable those in the waste and recycling sector to easily collate data on collection operations, customer activity, transfer stations, and resource facilities.

By unifying all your business processes in one, end-to-end integrated platform, an enterprise-wide solution helps you simplify and streamline activities. Core business areas such as customer management, container management, logistics, processing, and financials are all managed on a single platform.

Unlike siloed systems, this ensures your data is readily accessible – and easy to understand. AMCS Analytics, for example, enables users to organize, filter, and manipulate their data to reveal valuable business insights.

This enterprise-wide transparency and in-depth reporting helps support growth and improve efficiency, enabling you to:

• Identify cost savings
• Optimize collection routes
• Determine pricing strategies
• Manage on-site efficiencies

Download the AMCS Platform brochure below to learn how the market-leading enterprise-grade software platform will help improve your overall operational efficiency and increase profitability.

Increase automation to boost efficiency

In addition to improved transparency and operational visibility, an integrated software solution provides increased opportunities for automation.

From online self-service portals to automatic work order creation, an end-to-end solution enables you to streamline and connect the services you offer. With cloud-based technologies now firmly established, an integrated solution can help to digitize your offering in several ways:

• Scale Automation: Support rapid entry of all scale tickets and facilitate unattended operation. Capture and record driver signatures electronically and eliminate paper records.
• Pricing and Contract Management: Automated charging supports MRF-specific pricing including rebates, partial load reclassifications, tonnage volume breaks and discounts.
• Inventory Management: Automatically record inbound stock, work in progress and finished goods with support for adjustments, cycle counting and end-of-period reporting.
• Cost Tracking: Record and track all costs, including purchase, freight, and MRF processing, so you can arrive at a gross margin by material type.

As these examples demonstrate, a fully integrated solution delivers tailored automation to enhance efficiency, boost customer service levels, and reduce costs.

Connect your workforce for increased productivity

For staff interacting with the systems that run your business, an integrated, online system offers significant benefits. It provides the tools to increase productivity, plus real-time access to information for smarter decisions.

Rather than switching between several different software systems, an integrated solution provides staff with a custom user interface. Ease of navigation simplifies complex tasks, and with no need to transfer data between systems, your team has more time to focus on adding value.

Whether employees are working in the back office or in the field, integrated, cloud-based solutions deliver industry specific applications, tailored to requirements. Mobile workforce applications, for example, provide a real-time connection with drivers to track events, update daily schedules and capture data via an integrated app.

In the waste and recycling sector, this can help operators to:

• Manage a mobile workforce in real-time
• Record proof of service
• Monitor health and safety
• Respond to traffic issues

Thanks to this transparency, driver engagement is optimized, and errors minimized. With better communication between staff and streamlined interaction between the various parts of your organization, productivity is increased and operations run more smoothly.

Download the Mobile Workforce brochure below to learn more.

How to create an interconnected operating system

Working efficiently saves time, increases customer satisfaction, and boosts profitability.

Digitalization facilitates these efficiency gains by increasing automation and simplifying tasks. That’s why waste and recycling operators rely on software of all kinds, from industry-specific weigh bridge solutions to more standard CRM packages such as Salesforce.

Unfortunately, digitization alone is not enough to support the current needs of the waste and recycling industry as it moves towards a circular economy. Working with individual systems, even if they operate online, can only do so much.

Instead, operators should opt for an integrated solution that provides maximum coverage. Not only does this increase transparency, providing a deep view into operations, but it also avoids the cost, and risks, associated with complex integration projects.

For those organizations that do need to integrate, where existing software packages are deeply embedded in your process, AMCS can help. Our API Accelerator Programme offers a simplified approach to managing the APIs that connect your disparate software systems.

By enabling customers to connect the various CRM and finance applications, third party software and mobile apps that they already rely on, AMCS Platform’s REST APIs enable users to fast-track their integration projects, straightening the learning curve for system developers.

Integrate your systems for future growth

Integration has the power to transform the efficiency your business. That’s why smart operators of all sizes are working to establish an interconnected IT ecosystem.

When waste and recycling operators can automate, streamline, and connect their various processes, they are able to boost profitability, increasing both visibility and control to reduce overheads and costs.

But that’s not all. Integration also provides a platform for future innovation. Delivering the tools to build new services; the capability to scale at speed; and the ability to reach a wider audience by developing new product solutions to address new markets.

As the waste and recycling industry looks to the challenges ahead, perhaps this will ultimately be the greatest benefit of all?

Download the AMCS Platform brochure below to learn how you can streamline your organization processes and increase profitability.