A leading international logistics provider company faced issues handling its various operations in different countries. Spreading across diverse solutions, CargoWise One is a primary solution for logistics and supply chain management. However, the system they employed had a problem where most of the modules in CargoWise One were not integrated, leading to complications in their operations, lack of communication, and disparity in their supply chain.
These were some of the challenges faced by the company to make a more integrated system and collaboration with Elicit Technology. Elicit Technology is primarily a company that can fine-tune each CargoWise One system to perform efficiently within all the modules.
Problems
Lack of System Integration: Freight forwarding was handled through one module while customs, accounting, and warehousing functions were managed in another, which needed to be more simplified as it created immense delays in the transfer of data from one module to the other and in decision-making processes.
Manual Processes: Lack of system integration resulted in the utilization of paperwork to carry information within the departments. Not only does it affect the company and put a halt to its routines and activities, but it also intensifies errors, especially in areas such as customs documentation and invoicing.
Inconsistent Data: This was so because various departments had their respective information systems and updates were not frequently received or sometimes the information received was not complete.
The company needed a solution to integrate these modules to make processes quicker, minimize duplication of efforts, and improve the flow of information in its supply chain.
Solution Provided by Elicit Technology
Unified Data Flow Across Modules
A key challenge for Elicit Technology was to ensure that major modules in CargoWise One, including freight forwarding, customs clearance, accounting, and warehousing, are well-integrated in terms of data. This helped to do away with data reentry, ensuring that information was available in every department.
Improved and faster communication between departments led to better accuracy when making decisions. By having centralized information, the company could now obtain up-to-date and consistent information on shipments, finances, and compliance with little to no interruption to the operations.
Automation of Key Processes
Automation was adopted in important functions like job costing, revenue rating, and invoicing. Elicit customized CargoWise One so that it automatically provides the rates, tariffs, and costs relevant to each client to avoid inaccurate invoicing and record keeping.
This way the company optimized the number of manual operations, as automated applications manage calculations and data transfers. This was followed by similar and better outcomes of the production process, in addition to freeing the staff to engage in more value-added activities leading to lower labor hours.
Customizable Pricing and Costing Models
Through the implementation of the pricing and costing modules, Elicit Technology offered the company the option for customized pricing. This enabled them to set transaction-based tariffs, shipment volume, regional tariffs, and client-specific tariffs and contracts.
The flexibility to have an array of pricing policies also ensured that it offered competitive prices in the market while at the same time achieving favorable profitability levels. The integration also made job costs automatically computed hence cutting on a lot of manual errors in the general financial performances.
Enhanced Shipment Tracking and Visibility
Among the areas that needed improvement was tracking and tracing of shipments. Elicit Technology worked with other primary modules such as freight forwarding, and customs and the tracking module was incorporated to enable the company to track all shipments identify issues with them and rectify them in real time.
It has improved visibility throughout the supply chain, namely the updates on the status of specific shipments. It assisted in reducing time lost and provided customers with better time estimates thus leading to increased satisfaction.
Streamlined Compliance with Customs Integration
Since the process of international trade is rather intricate, Elicit Technology connected the customs compliance module to freight forwarding and accounting, thus keeping all documents up to date and conforming to the current legislation.
The integration minimizes the risk of fines and penalties for non-compliance, enhances the speed in customs control, and thereby eliminates costly time delays, within the supply chain.
Benefits
Improved Operational Efficiency: The organization found that overall operation efficiency was improved by 30 percent due to the integrated system that enabled the faster transfer of data between companies.
Reduction in Manual Labor: Automation has helped to bring about efficiency gains by comparing the amount of time spent on manual calculations before and after automation helped save time as it cut the number of manual data entries and calculations by 25 percent thus allowing the conserving of such resources for other more complex exercises.
Accurate and Timely Invoicing: Through the efficiency of data flow and updating on real-time information, issuing invoices was made easier and more accurate, enhancing the organization’s cash flows and minimizing errors usually associated with billing.
Enhanced Customer Satisfaction: Since shipments would be more trackable and visible in real-time, the company would be able to relay accurate and faster information to customers, thereby causing a needed 25% change in customer satisfaction.
Reduced Compliance Risk: The customization and compliance modules enabled accurate and up-to-date documentation for the customs which helped in avoiding fines as well as conforming to regulations.
Conclusion
CargoWise One module implemented with the help of Elicit Technology allowed for avoiding data duplication, enhancing the productivity of employees, and increasing the accuracy of financial processes in the context of the logistics provider.As can be seen from the case, the company benefited from having a unified system in place which led to increased automation and decrease of manual efforts required to perform various tasks. They are now much better placed to manage their expanding operations and provide the highest quality of service to their patrons.
