Imagine a critical shipment is due, but a key customs document is buried deep in someone’s inbox, or worse, misfiled in a cabinet. A small hiccup like that can quickly snowball into delays, frustrated customers and – most importantly – costs for your business.
Managing the constant flow of documents is the backbone of a successful supply chain but taking into account the sheer number of papers needed for each shipment, no matter the transport mode, it definitely is a challenge.
This article provides a look at the challenges that businesses face every day managing logistics documents. We’ll cover the risks of using outdated methods, the benefits of modern technology, and how we’ve engineered our solutions at Forto to eliminate the paper chase for good.
The real costs of outdated document handling
For any given international shipment, your team will likely handle over ten essential documents, including the bill of lading, commercial invoice, packing lists, and various customs declarations. When managed manually, this volume introduces significant risks that go far beyond simple inconvenience.
- Operational drag: Manual processes are slow. Time spent searching for documents, cross-referencing information in spreadsheets, and manually entering data into systems is time that your team could be spending on more valuable work.
- Financial bleed: The financial impact can be substantial. A missing or inaccurate document can lead to demurrage and detention charges while a container sits idle at port. Incorrect customs filings can result in fines, creating unexpected costs.
- Compliance and audit headaches: Maintaining a clean, auditable record of your freight movements is crucial for financial and regulatory compliance. With documents scattered across emails and physical folders, producing a reliable audit trail is time-consuming and exposing your business to unnecessary risk.
- Lack of visibility: Perhaps most importantly, poor document management creates a fog over your supply chain. Without a central, reliable source of information, it becomes impossible to get a quick and accurate answer to simple questions.
The shift from manual to digital: A necessary evolution
For decades, the standard approach to logistics documentation was a patchwork of manual systems: Filing cabinets for paper, complex spreadsheets for tracking, and endless email chains for communication. But this approach is not built for the speed and complexity of modern global trade.
Today, technology provides better options, centered on two key innovations:
- Centralized Document Management (DMS): The first step is creating a single source of truth. A modern Document Management System serves as a central, cloud-based library for every file related to your shipments. With features like version control, role-based access, and search functions, teams can find what they need, and can be confident they are looking at the most current information.
- Intelligent Automation: The next level of efficiency comes from automation. Using technologies like AI and Optical Character Recognition (OCR), these systems can “read” documents, understand the context, and extract critical data points. This information is then used to populate systems, validate data against other sources, and trigger the next step in the workflow, all without or only minimal human intervention.
The Forto solution: Integrated documents, seamless logistics
At Forto, we believe that smart document management should be directly built into your logistics service. This is why we’ve tackled the problem directly within our digital platform.
Our approach is designed for clarity and reliability:
First, the Forto Platform provides a dedicated, central space for all your shipping documents – no matter if sea freight, air freight, rail freight, or intermodal. When you log in to view a shipment, you’ll find a specific tab containing every related file, from the initial booking confirmation to the final proof of delivery. Your finance team can access invoices while your operations team reviews the Bill of Lading – all in real-time, all in one place. This ensures everyone is on the same page.
Second, we leverage our proprietary Gen-AI tool, FlashDoc, to enhance the speed and accuracy of our own operations. FlashDoc processes 12 of the most common logistics document types, automatically extracting key data with over 95% accuracy. This not only frees up valuable time but also ensures data integrity. By removing the manual step of copying & pasting data from documents, we drastically reduce the chance of human error. This data powers the shipment tracking and analytics you see on the platform, ensuring you are making decisions based on information you can trust. It also frees our logistics experts to focus on managing exceptions and providing you with proactive, high-value support.
Paperwork? Digital document management!
As supply chains become more interconnected, a shared, digital approach to documentation is a necessity. It is the foundation for greater automation, predictive analytics, and a transparent global trade network.
By integrating intelligent document management directly into our freight forwarding services, we aim to provide a logistics experience that is not only efficient but also remarkably clear and predictable.
Do you want to see it in action? Get in touch to book a demo!
