The size of the global logistics market was calculated at USD 10.68 trillion in 2022 and is expected to reach USD 18.23 trillion by 2032. With a compound annual growth rate of almost 5.5% in an industry widely known for its document volume, the amount of transport orders to be processed will continue to increase. This means an increasing number of documents, which increases the workload and also the risk of errors and inefficiencies.
As a logistics company, however, you want to go in the opposite direction: Efficient process management and cost reduction are likely to be at the top of your list in order to compete in a fiercely competitive market. That’s why the automation of transport order processing is an absolute key element. An AI-driven Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) solution brings all the necessary means to meet all the requirements of automating and accelerating transport orders.
The manual processing of transport orders causes a chain reaction
To process transport orders, employees in transport and logistics companies have to continuously record, check, compare with other data and approve relevant data from shipping documents. The problem here is on the one hand the format: paper still dominates in the logistics industry today. At the same time, this is only half of the problem: even for the electronically incoming documents into the mailroom, many logistics companies do not have a powerful extraction solution that could handle the semi-structured or completely unstructured data. In addition, the complexity of the shipping documents poses a challenge:
- Bill of Lading (BOL): A bill of lading documents the receipt of goods. The BOL is a legally binding document and serves as proof of ownership for the goods being transported. Thus, no shipments can be made without the Bill of Lading.
- Packing list: The packing list contains a detailed description of the contents of a shipment, but without information about the value.
- Proof of Delivery: The Proof of Delivery is one of the most important documents in the transportation process. The recipient must inspect the goods for defects and note them on the proof of delivery.
- Air Waybill (AWB): The Air Waybill is the central document accompanying the goods in an air shipment. The AWB is a contract between the shipper of the goods and the air carrier transporting them
- Dangerous Goods Declarations (DGD): When shipping dangerous goods, the shipper must complete a Dangerous Goods Declaration (DGD). The DGD confirms the proper packaging and declaration of the goods.
- Certificate of origin: The Certificate of Origin confirms the origin of a shipment and is internationally valid.
- Customs clearance documents: In customs clearance, the processing of import and export customs forms is part of everyday business. However, these documents are often of poor quality, which makes processing more difficult.
The quantity, differences and complexity of these shipping documents can set off a chain reaction for your logistics company during processing:
- Data entry errors: Manual entry of data from the shipping documents makes the process prone to errors. Regardless of whether the goods accompanying document is received on paper or digitally, typing errors happen quickly and important information is easily overlooked.
- Lack of standardization: efficient processing of documents in transport orders is further hampered by the lack of standardization across different organizations and regions.
- Compliance: With regard to documents such as bills of lading or the packing list, document processing requires constant compliance with regulations. Otherwise, costs are incurred quickly.
- Inefficient business processes: Errors in data entry, and the lack of document standardization leads to delays, lower productivity, and increased costs in transportation processes.
- Reduced customer satisfaction: Delays in delivery times not only drive up costs, they affect customer satisfaction or can even lead to cancellations.
As we all know, schedules are extremely tight and timely delivery is a must in order to be successful in the mid- and long-term. To speed up the processing of transport orders, it is worth automating the data capture from the transport order documents.
Whether by land, sea, rail or air, leading logistics companies use Parashift to read specific documents and significantly speed up the processing of transport orders.
Significant benefits with Parashift’s AI-powered data capture solution
As previously seen, complex and varying goods accompanying documents are the norm in transport order processing. Thus, traditional data capture solutions for this type can also be ruled out. The pain points for you as a transport or logistics company in the processing of transport orders are therefore clear. A solution must meet very specific requirements. Parashift’s Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) solution meets these with flying colors. Several factors contribute to this, one of the most important being through the proprietary Document Swarm Learning. This unique approach enables global training across all customers and across billions of data points. Parashift does not create a model per document type, but binds all learnings to so-called data point extractors. The idea is that document types share different data point extractors, such as a date or vendor number.
Partly because of the Document Swarm Learning technology, Parashift’s IDP solution offers unique advantages for your transport and logistics company:
- SaaS solution from the cloud: Forget about high licensing and deployment costs, once and for all. The Software-as-a-Service solution from the cloud makes it possible.
- Integration with existing systems: Integrate the IDP platform either easily into your existing application environment via a REST API or into workflow, DMS, ERP and RPA solutions via pre-built integrations. This way, the IDP solution also works as a data extraction optimization for your existing TMS or EDI, for example, to further improve the end-to-end process.
- Logistics-specific document types, ready to use: After integration, access 28+ logistics-specific document types for the transport order – pre-trained and ready to go. No training and no tedious configuration!
- Classify all goods accompanying documents automatically: With the Parashift Intelligent Document Processing platform you get a solution that performs quality improvement and page separation. Furthermore, the system automatically classifies all document types.
- Documents in any language: The Parashift IDP solution is language-agnostic. This means that you can process any document in the transport order in any language, without any additional configuration effort.
- No-Code app for creating customized documents: If you need to read out additional document types in the processing of the transport order, you can define them independently in a few minutes. Thanks to the No-Code app completely without IT knowledge, which is a huge plus for your operations.
The most versatile, cloud-native Intelligent Document Processing solution on the market.
Use Parashift IDP for your transportation and logistics organization
With Parashift’s Intelligent Document Processing, you not only automate the processing of transport orders. You significantly simplify and accelerate the entire business process. As a result, you can respond faster to customer requests and provide a unique customer experience. By automating transport orders, you set your services apart from the competition. And differentiate yourself not only on price, but also on service quality and speed.
For example, one ocean freight company uses the Parashift IDP platform to minimize errors in processing audits, invoices, and ocean freight charges. You can download the case study for free here.
Start your trial of Parashift’s Intelligent Document Processing solution today and automate your transport order processing: streamline your operations and get ahead in a fast-moving industry!
