IAM Digital Inventory Webinar Highlights: nearly 27,000 DoD electronic packing lists completed using Voxme Digital Inventory app by just one company

On January 28, 2022 DAB/IAM hosted industry wide webinar dedicated to the topic of digital inventories and the DoD/USTRANSCOM mandate to use  electronic inventories for DoD personal property shipments effective 15 MAY 2023.

Voxme electronic inventory solution user shares their experience of using Voxme Digital Inventory to complete close to 27,000 electronic packing lists over the last 5 years. Here are the highlights:

"We are shy of about 27,000 inventories right now"

We started using electronic inventories back in 2015 and we've been steadily increasing our usage. We are shy of about 27,000 inventories right now.

All of our implementations are done overseas. We don't have any CONUS (continental US) agents. We had few different challenges - languages and learnings and things like that but it's been going very well for us.

"We've been using Voxme Inventory product since 2015 and it's been very good"

Currently we use the Voxme product and we've been using it since 2015 and it's been very good. It gives us and it provides us with the benefits that I think we wanted out of an electronic inventory program. And as Chris has mentioned it's clear, it's very legible on our outputs, it allows us to take photos, mark up the photos and document pre-existing conditions all within the same output.

We've done a lot of work in terms of meeting all the military inventory specifications. We are happy with the provider. They worked very closely with us as we were going through all the growing pains. Because the military has never really understood electronic inventory when we were launching this. I think it was a learning experience for us, for the vendor and for the military. But i think we are at a point now where everything is rolling along pretty smoothly.

"If we tried to take the iPads away from the crews, they would revolt"

But really the crews definitely take to it relatively easily. There is a definite transaction period. It's 1 to 2 months. In 2 months they are probably very very versed in how to use this program. And I can tell you right now - if we tried to take it away from the crews they would revolt. So almost in every single system where we implemented it, 2 months later they won't give it up anymore.

So that's kinda the thing that we take to heart - you know, it is the right thing to do. It does help protect the agent, it helps protect the service member, it helps protect the military.

I think somebody mentioned fraudulent claims. Certainly all the pre-existing conditions are here, they are documented and it's something that we can protect ourselves with as a general agent moving shipments.

"And still with some of the older guys out there, once they learn it, they don't wanna go back"

One of the comments I want to make is when you are implementing something like this, your company has to be all in because it is a behavioral change for the crews, crew chiefs, the drivers, whoever you are assigning this technology to. So the management gotta support it. I think the company has to buy into the entire concept and I think most of the people in the company understand benefits from the claims perspective, documentation perspective and even export and import customs clearance perspective. So those are the things that you want to concentrate on and make sure that the company is behind you.

They should be willing to spend a bit of money, time and effort for this implementation to work well. Because for some of the older crews out there it's a major change. And still with some of the older guys out there, once they learn it, they don't wanna go back. And I think that's the biggest point I wanna drive home - do a good implementation, spend the time and the effort and I think you are gonna end up liking the outcome of this.

"We've noticed a huge reduction in turn times to adjudicate a claim"

What we've found is that there's a very big reduction in turn times of claims, adjudication times based on electronic inventories because they don't have to go back and forth with the agent to say "hey, do you have any more information, do you have any photos of this". The photos are already embedded into the electronic inventories so the claims adjusters can just pull up the entire inventory, take a look, hopefully there are pre-existing conditions notated on tech inventory. But you have photos, you have serial numbers, you have everything so we've noticed a huge reduction in turn times to adjudicate a claim.