Growing pressure for Logistics to deliver faster and more efficient service

The market demands for speed, performance and transparency

Like most other industries, transportation and logistics are currently confronting immense change, bringing both risk and opportunity. There are many ways the sector could develop to meet these challenges, from incorporating innovative technology to managing growing customer expectations or adopting new business models to reduce costs.

The logistics sector is under acute and growing pressure to deliver a better service at an ever-lower cost. It can only hope to do this by making maximum and intelligent use of technology, from automation to data analytics. This promises lower costs, improved efficiency, and the opportunity to make genuine breakthroughs in the way the industry works. But the ‘digital fitness’ required to deliver the necessary speed and flexibility is a challenge for the sector as it struggles with local systems and silos throughout the supply chain.

The most common complaints from logistics customers are that they have no control over their shipment after it leaves their facility or warehouse, no visibility into where their shipment is at any given point—or whether it has been delayed—and no access to data that they can use for business intelligence.

Providing this level of customer support and transparency is only possible using a multi-country software system—and doing so with an awareness of customers’ cost sensitivity. That means logistics companies need to find a scalable solution that can be up-and-running quickly so their customs operations will continue to run efficiently on the platform they have invested in, regardless of growth or changes in cross-border trade regulations. This is another concern and the benefit of using a SaaS solution – they require minimal resources to maintain. C4T has seen how CAS has helped real-world logistics providers strategically improve their offering.

The challenge

Many multi-country logistics firms struggle with global reach. Staying on top of various customs formalities is time consuming and complex. In C4T’s experience working with large logistics firms, we have found the following issues to be particularly common:

Companies often use a patchwork of home-grown software programs by country that have evolved over time. Using local solutions for each country is inefficient and error prone.
Changing regulations are more the rule than the exception for Customs. Incorporating these new rules across diverse systems is a full-time job and facilitates errors, especially if those changes need to be made quickly.
Switching between different import and export files is time-consuming, error-prone, and unnecessarily doubles the workload. Different regulations apply for import and export declarations in different countries and laws are ever-changing.
Given the nature of tracking transport, copious amounts of data are produced, but how to enable analysis or optimisation of sequencing flows for declaration steps?
Large IT teams can be required to manage the data as well as maintain the security of that customs data. Logistics companies are currently in the news for hacking attacks that shut down their systems and movement of goods for weeks at a time.

The solution

By using a system like CAS, logistics companies can now have one standardised declaration programme for all countries, simplifying cross-border transport. While logistics companies typically make software solution choices on a local or regional level, changing the game to go for a global solution is an innovative option. CAS is part of the bigger picture of next-gen digital apps with the goal of giving customers control, visibility, and analytics. The benefits include reduced maintenance, lower subscription costs, and the ability to manage more declarations in less time thanks to standardisation and automation. Logistics companies using CAS have drastically reduced their cost per declaration.

Calculate your cost

By using a SaaS solution for customs formalities, supply chain firms can offer an even better service to their customers. Successful logistics companies are embracing digitisation to become leaner, faster, and more efficient in order to deliver a customer-focused supply chain. CAS allows for manual, semi-automated, or fully automated declaration filing to suit their flows of goods and range of products.

In addition, compliancy is supported by C4T’s Legal Content team. They ensure that CAS is always up to date with customs changes, independent of the country in which the declarations are made.

To rise to the top of their industry, logistics service providers need to deliver frictionless import and export services to their customers, providing a customs control tower that removes guesswork and replicates necessary data and processes for a lighter lift on the customer’s side.

Visual Flow - single message double filing_v3

Another unique CAS feature is single message, double filing. When an export declaration is created in the country of departure, it automatically triggers an import declaration in the country of arrival. This reduces the process to a matter of minutes, lessening the workload and shortening lead time.

To protect their companies from cyber-attacks, CIOs are increasingly turning to cloud-native solutions, which guarantee superior security over on-premise and private applications. A single-source-code, cloud-native solution like CAS offers enterprise-class availability, reliability, and unparalleled data security—and will be around for the long term. 

What you missed at Multimodal

A Day in the Life of C4T’s Quality Assurance Team

Growing pressure for Logistics to deliver faster and more efficient service

The market demands for speed, performance and transparency

The challenge

The solution

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