Where's the proof?

One of the most common questions our distributors are asked by their customers is "Can you tell me who signed for that delivery?” Another common question is "Can you show me the original delivery document?” Perhaps there is a legitimate concern about an item delivered, cylinders returned or maybe the customer is just trying to avoid paying. Regardless, there normally are only two ways to produce the desired proof for the customer. One is to go through your filing system, get a copy of the original delivery document with all the handwritten notes including the signature and then send it to the customer via fax or email. The other option is to invest in a document imaging system and scan every delivery document. The document imaging option is very sophisticated and works nicely, but can require a large up-front investment.

Now there is a another option, the iPhone. Using the iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch, you can take a picture of the delivery document immediately after the customer signs it. The image of the document is saved with the date, time and invoice number and these images are automatically uploaded to a designated server via a cellular or Wi-Fi connection.

Once the images are on the server, you will be able to bring them up and email the image to the customer as proof of delivery or to answer their questions. 

The obvious advantage to this approach is that you can provide absolute proof of delivery to your customers without the requirement to invest in a document imaging system. The other advantage is that having each driver capture the image as part of the delivery process eliminates a scanning bottleneck back at the office.