Planned IT Investments of 300.000 euro with focus on client

Aug 4, 2023News

Customer focus

Customer satisfaction comes first for us. This is why we invest the most in the services we provide to ensure sustainability, consistency, and correctness.

To meet our customers’ needs for real-time information on shipment location and estimated delivery time, we integrate with major shipping platforms. Our system electronically exchanges data fully automatically with customer, carrier and tracking systems, provides document transfer and notifies of delayed shipments and emergency situations. We are open to exchange data with other systems at the request of our customers.

Transport Optimization

And this is where artificial intelligence (AI) comes in. Our transport management system analyzes requests, offers optimized routes and combines different shipments and different carriers. This contributes to the reduction of transport costs and, accordingly, the price of transport, as well as to the reduction of carbon emissions. We are constantly investing in the improvement of the software applications that our freight forwarders use. We improve our internal processes in a way that saves resources, which improves and optimizes the services we provide. The systems we use enable different teams to work together more effectively, thus providing an adaptable, seamless service.

Cloud services

We successfully combine local IT infrastructure with modern cloud services. They provide us with the flexibility to communicate and exchange documents with colleagues in other offices, as well as with customers and suppliers around the world. Since the beginning of this year, all employees of the company use Microsoft office 365 and by the end of the year we will migrate the rest of the company’s internal office applications to the cloud.

Document flow optimization

We receive by post a large amount of paper documents, the data of which is entered into the system for post-processing. The implementation of a system for automatic optical text recognition and data categorization will significantly reduce the time of manual entry and reduce the possibility of errors. These systems also use artificial intelligence, and after a short training they can even recognize handwritten text with about 60-80% success rate. The value of the investment will be around 40,000 euros and the system is expected to be operational in the first quarter of 2024.

Information security

The introduction of new IT solutions into all spheres of business also revealed some not-so-popular and useful opportunities that we had not encountered before. It is of utmost importance that all systems are regularly updated and vulnerabilities to be discovered and responded to immediately. For these reasons, we invest in the new generation of network switches and firewalls with active protection and the use of artificial intelligence for early detection and prevention of unregulated access to information. We have ordered these devices and from July we are starting pilot implementation and testing in two of our largest offices. Funding is €35,000 and is 100% internal. We also organize training for employees to recognize “phishing” e-mails, imitation sites and other mechanisms to mislead users into giving out confidential information.

Realizing the leading role of information technology for business development, in the next three years the company plans to invest more than 300,000 euros in modern IT solutions.

Digital transformation in our company is seen as a factor for growth and sustainable development. Of course, there is always resistance to change, but we try to overcome this through communication, training and by highlighting the advantages of new digital technologies and their benefits. The speed of technological development makes digitization a process of continuous improvement, and we must be part of this process.

Our colleague, Dimitar Sarafov, IT Manager, has been featured with this material in the printed edition of BGlobal Magazine, July edition.