A Case Study of CowTown Redi Mix – Part 1: Streamlined Billing Process

CowTown’s story is one of innovation and inspiration – Beginning in 2002 with a small fleet of mixers and one concrete batch plant, CowTown has grown into a fierce regional player with over 150 ready-mix trucks and six concrete plants serving the Dallas/Fort Worth area.

Ownership at CowTown has a keen eye for new business opportunities and knows how to leverage Cloud software to accelerate their growth. CowTown was one of the early adopters of Sysdyne’s ConcreteGO Cloud Dispatch, allowing them to minimize the need to build and support a complex in-house IT infrastructure, in turn saving costs and resources. Adding plants to ConcreteGO dispatch is as simple as a few clicks – After successfully implementing ConcreteGO, CowTown decided to move ahead and install Sysdyne Batch Controls at their plants.

As they grew, CowTown faced common challenges in the concrete industry – to streamline the billing process and reduce the cost and days of accounts receivable collections. Prior to implementing Sysdyne’s solution, couriers would drive to each plant and collect paper tickets on a daily basis. They would return to the main office with stacks of tickets that were then scanned, filed, and eventually archived in boxes. The back-office staff spent a tremendous amount of time sorting through the paper to associate tickets with the proper invoices. Tickets were then scanned individually, attached to separate invoices then sent to customers. The entire process was costly, time-consuming, inefficient, and prone to error.

CowTown approached Sysdyne in search for a solution. In 2019, CowTown began implementing Sysdyne’s iStrada, a fully-featured GPS truck tracking solution including paperless ticketing, timekeeping, contractor/inspector collaboration platforms, KPI (key performance indicator) dashboards, and Sysdyne’s two-way ERP integration tool, Quicklink. With iStrada paperless ticketing, all final tickets collected by drivers are stored in a secure location in PDF format. The new process had the back-office staff using Quicklink to open tickets from ConcreteGO and create an invoice in their billing program by downloading the PDF ticket from iStrada and saving it to a local folder on their computer. They would then click the attach file button in their billing program and navigate the computer folders identified by invoice number to find the PDF tickets and attach them to the invoice. See diagram below:

“What used to take us over four hours, now takes less than 15 minutes.”

– Les Hogan, General Manager, CowTown Redi Mix

Sysdyne has been CowTown’s technology partner every step of the way. The next step in CowTown’s journey of digital transformation is to deploy a QR code-based process that links timekeeping to payroll. The workflow was developed with Sysdyne and will significantly streamline the employee clock-in/out process and improve payroll. We look forward to continuing our long and successful relationship with our partners at CowTown and salute the innovative spirit that serves them well as they continue to grow and prosper.