Case Study | Read time: #
A global shipping and logistics company had disparate processes, technologies and methodologies as a result of multiple acquisitions across the globe
WNS leveraged its domain expertise to consolidate and standardize operations across 60 countries
Digitization, automation and technology interventions were embedded across various operations to save costs, increase process maturity and drive effective outcomes
Any international shipping and logistics process has multiple challenges. Key among them is managing the significant amount of information that changes hands continuously during the process. Often, the processes are decentralized and manual in nature. Further, global operations require dealing with different legal requirements and local variances. Hence, it's a complex task to consolidate and centralize the operations while maintaining the country-specific nuances. It also calls for a deep understanding of the shipping and logistics industry, underpinned with digital and automation capabilities, to standardize the operations and ensure on-time delivery, high accuracy and low costs.
It had acquired several shipping and logistics companies across the globe including those in Italy, Brazil, France and the U.S. Each acquired company had its own technology, process methodology, and customer and country specific nuances. The client thus had diverse systems, processes and no uniform view of the entire operations. Decentralized, non-standardized and manual processes across 60 countries had led to high operations' cost, increased Turnaround Time (TAT) and errors.
The client required a solution that entailed consolidating and standardizing the operations, while maintaining the customer and country-specific nuances. A global operating model that included process excellence, digitization and automation had to be deployed to bring down costs and eliminate errors.
WNS leveraged its industry expertise and experience of managing multiple shipping and logistics clients across the globe to offer a customized solution encompassing consolidation, standardization and digital transformation.
We conducted an extensive and incisive exercise across the client's key locations to understand the process and technology landscape. This offered a comprehensive view of all the gaps in the existing operations. It also enabled WNS to identify the operations where digitization, automation and technology interventions could be embedded to save costs, increase process maturity and drive effective outcomes.
The solution entailed:
Consolidating and standardizing the operations across 60 countries
Providing a one-stop solution for delivering end-to-end processes including tariff, reference data management, booking, export and bills of lading
Digitizing and automating processes with multiple bolt-on automation tools
Implementing a workflow solution to provide increased security, reliability and scalability while capturing information from offshore locations. This also helped in:
Automating work allocation based on in-built algorithms
Offering real-time view of all operations
Providing intelligent Optical Character Recognition (OCR)
Enabling direct interaction with the client's system to provide outputs
The client now has a uniform view of its operations across countries, while digitization and automation have cut costs and eliminated errors. Customer and country-specific nuances have remained intact, while operational excellence has contributed to USD 4.3 Million in savings.
Other significant outcomes include:
71 percent reduction in TAT with regard to the tariff update process
Over 99 percent accuracy achieved in the billing and invoicing process
80 percent increase in productivity due to implementation of the workflow solution
100 percent rate updation prior to the expiry of the effective date
82 percent improvement in TAT for import advance manifest submissions
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Technology
03 December 2021
Shipping and Logistics
Digital Transformation