DHL Venezuela Deploys Genero Based CRM Solution for National Service Centers

Genero freed development team from hardware specific design concerns

dhl_logonewCaracas Venezuela, October 29th, 2004. DHL is a household name when it comes to transporting documents and packages, but did you know that it also offers e-Commerce fulfillment and intelligent logistics solutions?

DHL has been specializing in various industries such as Automotive and Life Sciences as well as customized solutions for its global customers.

Recently the company decided to improve their nation wide service by replacing their service center application with a leading edge ‘Over The Counter’ solution, developed totally in Genero.

The new application allows DHL customers to maintain a better rapport with the service center and interact in real-time for packages they bring into the bureau. DHL agents process the package by weighing it and determining its volume and issue a laser printed invoice and airway bill number. The system provides management reporting and interfaces with other central systems. The customer can then track his shipment with the airway bill number. Shipping information is immediately available to any DHL service center nation wide, irrespective of the service center’s geographic location. By better informing customers of the whereabouts of their packages, customer satisfaction is greatly increased and airway bill processing is accelerated. This decreases the amount of time DHL agents spend with customer enquiries and as a result lowers overall operating costs.

DHL also expects to save printing costs and dramatically improve application response times.

By centralizing the processing with this new application, DHL is simplifying the information exchange with other corporate systems. In the past, some of this information was entered manually, requiring supervision and complex processes to avoid errors and delays. As a result of this new deployment, DHL can now think about offering new services as agents have more time and analysis of customer data exposes unforeseen trends.

“The most important feature Genero gave us was the ability to separate business from presentation logic,” said Jorge Uray, DHL Project Leader. “That feature alone freed us from the design chore of worrying about user interfaces. We just focused on the business logic to deliver new services. When I think about the time we wasted in the past, I only wish we had chosen Genero sooner. Genero was a real win for us.”

As the company is under a resource optimization program, integration with the existing infrastructure and corporate DHL standards was essential. The current platform is based on an HP 9000 Unix server with PC’s acting as clients for local access and some remote sites connecting via modem.

“Genero technology offers the possibility to select the hardware, operating system and database platform downstream from application development. That translates into a pure productivity win for us,” said Mr. Jorge Uray.

“By using Genero, we fully exploited our existing infrastructure while making our application ‘state-of-the-art’. And we did this without any investment in expensive new hardware,” said Daniel Durand, DHL Venezuela Development Manager. “The application is amazingly light and fast” he added.

The application was developed in a record time of 3 weeks.

“We generated a critical business application in a very short time,” said Raúl Barzallo, Technology Manager DHL Venezuela. “Before Genero, I didn’t think you could develop anything in that space of time. This will enable us to improve existing customer relationships and develop future ones at our service center counters. We are extremely happy about our decision to choose Four Js Development Tools as a supplier and Genero as our new development platform,” he added.