Roger Bible is director of operations at Nashville-based ATC Driveaway, a veteran-owned nationwide vehicle transport and logistics company founded in 2001. It specializes in professional driveaway and fleet relocation services, meaning they use hired professional drivers to drive commercial, industrial and government vehicles to their final destinations rather than towing them on trailers. Bible has more than 30 years in the field, including leadership roles in fleet coordination, customer relations and operational management.
What’s in your tech stack?
Here at ATC Driveaway, our tech stack is geared toward providing us with operational visibility, financial accuracy and speed of communication. From an operations perspective, our core components include a dispatch and logistics platform (Central Dispatch) and our internal tracking workflow (Samsara). We combine Central Dispatch with communication tools to serve our customers and the Samsara platform provides us with real-time visibility to driver locations and schedules.
On the finance and accounting side of the house, we use an accounting package (QuickBooks Online) for invoicing, reporting and reconciliation, complemented by a few spreadsheet-based forecasting tools for tracking margins by load and client. A ticketing and internal request system connects operations and accounting and helps us to track and assign costs to specific billings. Perhaps the most valuable element of our tech stack, however, isn’t any particular software, but how it connects operations and finances together.
What’s your joy and what’s your headache?
The “joy” our tech stack provides us is our operational visibility. Because our systems work as designed, we are able to see any job from dispatch through delivery and invoicing without needing much in the way of manual follow-up. This gives us the ability to make faster, better operational decisions and provides highly accurate financial reports.
Our “headache,” on the other hand, involves our level of integration. Like many operations-heavy businesses, we have disconnected systems that “don’t play well” with each other and require significant manual reconciliation between operations and accounting. This is especially challenging with exceptions, delays and customer-specific shipping instructions. The challenge of data consistency also bites us when operational inputs are not standardized, causing problems downstream in reporting.
If you could wave a magic wand, what would you make software companies do for you?
If I had a magic wand, I would wish for our software vendors to prioritize interoperability and simplicity above all else. Many of our pain points arise from disparate systems that are not designed to speak the same language and require an undue amount of customization and middleware. Additionally, I would love to see software designers focus more on the realities of operations. Typically systems are designed with an “ideal scenario” in mind, while many operations-heavy businesses involve multiple exceptions on a daily basis. Our systems would provide so much more value if they were built to better handle those exceptions and complex scenarios.
What’s your best piece of tech advice for others in your job?
My top recommendation would be to understand your processes before selecting your platform. Far too many companies purchase software first and then try to mold their business to fit their platform. We always approach the situation differently and say, “Figure out what you want your operation to look like and then purchase tools that get you there.” We would also emphasize the importance of user adoption: Simply because software exists doesn’t mean it is being used correctly. Ensure your users are following established processes every time.
Finally, I would suggest doing all that you can to minimize hand-offs between operations and accounting, as this contributes to both errors in reporting and potential billing mistakes.
