The challenge
Consignment data arrived in one system and had to exist in two others before anybody could invoice. The work was done by hand, correctly, by people whose time was worth more than that.
Case study
Taking eleven hours a week out of a logistics operator’s back office
Two people spent their mornings copying numbers between a portal and a spreadsheet.
The objective
Remove the re-entry without replacing any of the three systems, none of which the business was ready to change.
The strategy
Automate the transfer, not the judgement. Anything requiring a decision stayed with a person, with the automation preparing the decision rather than making it.
The solution
A scheduled integration with an exception queue: matched records move silently, anything ambiguous is put in front of somebody with the context already attached.
The execution
Ran in parallel with the manual process for three weeks. The parallel run, not the build, is what produced the confidence to switch it on.
The results
The morning routine disappeared. The exception queue averages a handful of items a day and is the only part anybody looks at.
11 hrs
Returned per week
Illustrative sample figure, not a client result
-92%
Manual re-entry
Illustrative sample figure, not a client result
0
New systems introduced
Illustrative sample figure, not a client result
Sample content. These figures are placeholders for layout review and must be replaced with verified numbers, or removed, before publication.
What we learned
The exception queue mattered more than the automation. It is what made the change acceptable to the people doing the work.
What is next
The same pattern applies to their supplier onboarding, which is currently a longer version of the same problem.
An opportunity identified for a future phase, not work already commissioned.
Sample content, created for layout review. Replace or remove it before this site goes live.
About this entry
The client is described rather than named, which is how an anonymized case study is published. The figures are illustrative and labelled as such.
How this was verified
Sample content. Client anonymised; figures are illustrative.
The problem behind it
If this is your situation, start here.
What we did
The capabilities involved.
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