Cargo Brokers improves invoice data entry efficiency with Shipamax

Introduction 

Cargo Brokers is an international freight forwarder and customs broker based in Atlanta. The family run business is led by Chief Operating Officer, Nicole Steinmetz, with a team of 35 staff working in three offices across North America. Before making the switch to Shipamax, all of CargoBrokers vendor invoices were processed manually by a small and lean finance team. 

The Challenge 

With business booming, the volume of invoices Cargo Brokers received on a daily basis increased sharply, which started to put a strain on the finance team. The increased level of demand had a ripple effect, with operations agents spending more of their time focused on time consuming admin tasks, mainly centered around fixing invoice discrepancies in CargoWise.  

COO Nicole Steinmetz knew that manually processing invoices was not a scalable solution, and would quickly become a bigger challenge as the business grew. Nicole was faced with a choice. Recruit a second finance team member, which would come at a significant financial cost, or explore an alternative solution. 

The Solution

At a time when back office efficiencies are more important than ever, Cargo Brokers needed a cost effective solution that would help them to maintain a high level of customer service and allow agents to focus on key clients rather than time consuming admin. It was time to explore automation as a solution and leverage Shipamax’s technology to help extract data from invoices they had been processing manually. 

Automating time consuming data entry 

With Shipamax, Cargo Brokers has streamlined invoice processing by automating previously time consuming data entry into CargoWise.  This has resulted in significant time savings for its operations and finance teams, who are now able to focus on key customers and increased transaction counts coming from new business.

Easy collaboration means happier employees (and customers)

In the past, managing vendor invoice exceptions was a painstaking process, but using the Shipamax Exceptions Manager, both teams can easily collaborate on exceptions and manage everything on one platform. So rather than spending time chasing updates over email and manually fixing errors, agents can stay focused on the task that matters most - satisfying new and existing customers quickly and efficiently.

A cost effective solution that drives new back office efficiencies

Since implementing Shipamax, CargoBrokers has been able to deliver quick and quantifiable ROI. “The time we have saved using Shipamax has translated into significant cost savings,” says Nicole. With Shipamax, there was no need to bring in a second team member, which has helped control costs while generating new efficiencies, including a reduction in the cost of data extraction per document.

If you're interested in learning more about automated document processing in logistics, read our latest guide on the topic, which includes the benefits of document automation software for shippers.