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September 13, 2000 10:36 AM, EDT

At Prime Inc., we had a large project that would improve our automated billing function. We were using a system that handled only about 30% of the billing, committed too many errors and required manual re-keying.

Billing is not an area in which you can normally recognize a huge return. But in this case, we felt there was an opportunity to save money. We estimated the cost of the project to be more than $250,000. This included purchased software and custom integration.

Among the arguments for the investment were that we would need to hire fewer people as we grew. We estimated we could grow by 30% without adding additional staff.

We felt we could save ourselves from having to hire four additional people over the next two to three years. In addition to cutting costs on labor, we believed that customer satisfaction would be a huge benefit of this new system.

For the full story, see the Sept. 11 print edition of Transport Topics. .