The AMCS Platform Winter 2023 Release

This is the first in a series of blog entries that explores the value AMCS can add to your growing business. Our release approach recognizes the importance of a secure, easy-to-use, cloud-first, extensible solution for a wide range of environmental customers. For more details, please download our Winter Highlights document below, or contact us for a consultation about your specific needs and questions.

An overview of the Winter 2023 Release

This release delivers value to our customers in four key thematic areas which are a logical and functional outgrowth of previous releases. These themes are:

Transforming transport

Transportation is the heartbeat of an environmental services organization. Smooth and safe execution delivers operational savings, higher margin, and sustainability. When smooth turns to rough it drives costs, impacts safety, and hits margins.

The AMCS Winter release brings transformed work centers, major enhancements to AMCS Fleet Maintenance with the launch of the Smart Safety mobile app, and a new telematics connector and carbon emissions calculator embedded in Route Planner.

Let’s briefly look at two of the new areas, the new Master Route Management work center and the new Transport Validation work center. More details are in upcoming blogs and in our Winter Highlights document.

Master Route (MR): A MR is a sequenced list of stops for a specific material (for example, Organic Waste) and vehicle type (for example, Front End Load) which reoccurs at a defined interval. Planners can periodically build master routes, add/delete new recurring visits to routes, and sequence visits on a route. The Winter 2023 release has:

• Templatized and simplified the management of Master Routes
• An evolved User Experience transformed for the platform UX

Transport Validation work center (available in January 2024): This release, focusing on commercial route work, has been transformed in usability and clarity by taking advantage of the AMCS Platform user experience. This makes it easy to complete route validation and to identify and resolve exceptions, protecting against revenue leakage and enable drill-down into exceptions that require corrective action.

Other key transformations in transport that are discussed in the Winter Highlights Document and in more detail in upcoming blogs include:

• Enhancements to Smart Dispatch including improved control of stacked containers and trailer jobs, re-allocation of skipped or rejected jobs, and automatic scheduling of standing roll-off jobs

• Enhancement to AMCS Fleet Maintenance, including a new Smart Inspection Option, a new AMCS IoT Hub for preventive maintenance with a Telematics Data Option, and expanded multi-lingual support to ease adoption and increase productivity for multi-lingual staff

• A carbon emissions calculator to measure and reduce your fleet footprint

• Vision AI extended to improve driver safety with automated insights

Continuous Digital Transformation for Finance

Financial operation is the the lifeblood of an environmental services organization. Quick, accurate, and secure financial processes ensure savings, improved margins, quicker and improved cashflow, and can make or break the customer and vendor relationships that build your organzation. Without meeting modern expectations, you will be at a disadvantage. With the Winter 2023 release, The process of transforming the user experience with the Platform UX continues with new price automation innovations.

Innovations in this release include:

New Supplier Pricing Automation options. There is a new single standardized account concept for both customers and all types of suppliers. Suppliers can be sellers of material feedstock or provide transport, and third-party locations (destinations) for unloading (tipping) and processing. 

Previously, supplier pricing was managed by cost agreements. These have been replaced by our existing service agreements to provide more flexibility and automation, providing a range of new pricing options. They are discussed in the Winter Highlights Document and in upcoming blogs.

Other key finance transformation include:

• A Full Price Hierarchy now available on the AMCS Platform user experience with Company Outlet Service Agreement (COSA). This automates charging of prices set for an operational area and makes the management of accurate price data easier and protect margins.
• Financial Document Management. Debit Notes and Proof of Service so key documents can be automatically generated and sent to customers as part of the order change process reducing manual effort, the risk of overlooking them, and associated costs
• Enhanced Management of Deposits & Prepayments to reduces manual effort and deliver compliance.
• New AMCS Financials Connector (Available December), to support an automated one-way push of general ledger summary details into AMCS Financials work center from the AMCS Platform.

Maximize speed of service at Scale

Materials acceptance and inspection can be the gatekeeper of a safe, profitable, and competitive environmental services organization. Quick, accurate, compliant, and trackable activities at the scale make or break your organization. 

Without meeting modern expectations, you can be at a disadvantage.

New material management features further digitize practices, improve service to suppliers, increase yard safety against dangerous materials, and ensure compliance with both environmental and anti-theft regulations.

With the Winter 2023 release, service at the scale is sped up and automated.

• Turning your Scale into a Point of Sale with AMCS Pay, Cash and Checks
• New Quick Entry Scale Workflow for a first time Peddler
• Import of Inbound Direct Movements to Third Party Destinations

Material management is automated to improve material quality and compliance practices.

• Grading Email Notifications
• Automated Quarantine Controls
• Automated Controls of Prohibited (PM) and Environmentally Sensitive Materials (ESM)
• Compliance- Quantity Threshold Controls
• Configuration of resolution of material images on Mobile Grading APP

Smarter data-driven decisions

Accessing and analyzing data are the brainwaves of a thoughtful, insightful, and data driven business. Simple to access, easy to model, and simple to visualize data can only improve your organization.

This release provides support for the OData (Open Data Protocol) data access protocol for secure, standardized, and effortless access to AMCS Platform data. OData is an open protocol that seamlessly integrates into existing On-Site data warehouse initiatives and native aggregation across the customer’s global enterprise. It is comple-ments existing AMCS BI and Analytics tools such as the standard Reports Catalogue, embedded Self-Serve report writer and AMCS Data Mart.

Currently being piloted with select customers, OData will be on general release in early 2024 and it will form part of the AMCS REST API suite.