For the past two years, we have been working hard to digitize our business. The moving industry is not often associated with technological innovation, but we take technology very seriously to maintain consistent quality and competitive pricing. Many years ago, the NY branch/parent company of Shleppers Moving & Storage built its own moving software that far exceeds anything available on the market as a white-labeled solution, and that is what we use to manage our business. The result is that we can process massive amounts of incoming leads and provide first-rate service and pricing consistently. Our system prices the jobs, interfaces with operations, and updates our clients along the way (and much more!).
I love technology, and so I keep up with all the latest innovations to see if anything could improve our service or make moving an easier experience for our customers. One really interesting platform I vetted is called YEMBO. This is a startup company that has developed an AI to take accurate inventories. Basically, customers take their smart phones and create a video by rotating the camera in the center of the room. Once the circle is complete, the video shuts off and the AI begins processing. Within a few moments, every item in the room is listed on a spreadsheet with its dimensions and volume. It’s truly incredible and doesn’t miss a thing.
At some level, I felt that this technology could be the future of moving. On the other hand, the experience is a bit impersonal, and puts additional responsibility on the customer. That’s potentially not good. Our current methodology is to do a live walk through with a company representative either in person or over the phone; we’ve found this extremely accurate, engaging, and helpful, so for now we will stick with it.
In other news, we recently took a big step forward that I am quite proud of–we digitized our moving documents. If you’ve moved in the past, you might remember that the paperwork can be extensive. Documents like Service Agreements, Bills of Lading, Inventory Logs, Vehicle Inspection reports–and so many more. All these documents require a lot of printing paper for us, time and preparation, and made document management a full-time project. Fortunately, after experimenting with and researching various solutions, we finally settled on something terrific that is already making our operation easier to manage. Now, when our movers arrive, nearly all the moving forms are executed on tablet. It’s simple and fast and allows us to have perfect records with little management, while also providing a customer with clear records for their files to reference.
Moving season is now in full gear. We can’t wait to share these innovations with our customers and look forward to it!