Introduction

A freight forwarding company has reached out to us for a web solution which would improve their logistic and operation facilities by properly mapping out and organising the planning processes for their different services.

Problem

The client utilises road, airline and sea transportation. Freight forwarding services of each type have different data metrics. Therefore, various documents for each type have to be generated and stored for the numerous logistical and operational purposes of the company. We had to take into consideration multiple industry factors and come up with a complex data management system, which conducts elaborative practices in order to optimise the efficiency of day-to-day operations. Additionally, we had to store private information of various clients, shippers and suppliers, necessary for the workflow processes.

Our Solution

Due to the specifics of the project, we were in need of Airtable alternatives in order to provide a cost-effective solution. We facilitated different meetings to scope out the particular industry's know-how and we derived a general data scheme and relations, in order to create and manage various tables, data models, useful widgets and data filters. Furthermore, we integrated Authentik as an authentication service to feature a more convenient user access control. Additionally, we designed multiple widgets for different document processes. We created a specialised document template, which is populated by records from the tables. A functionality for printing the documents as a separate file was also added for convenience, along with utilities for conversion and calculation.

Challenges

Initially, the information provided by the client for the development of the project was scarce. However, after multiple meetings with them, as well as a lot of thorough research, related to the ins-and-outs of the freight forwarding industry, we were able to guide the client in the right direction and clear out a lot of ambiguities concerning the project. In addition to that, we assisted the client with IT consultations, which helped them improve various aspects of their internal company processes and services.