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Author: surya karki

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Logistics

Streamlining Logistics Operations with Automation Technology

As competition in the logistics industry continues to increase, stakeholders must make strategic investments to stay ahead of the curve. Technology has emerged as a crucial factor in this effort, providing shippers and carriers with powerful capabilities to navigate the unpredictable freight market. Among these capabilities, automation stands out as a significant change. With the evolution of technology over time, automation has become an asset in the arsenal of logistics professionals, equipping them to better handle uncertainties and challenges. 

Thanks to technology, the process of invoice processing has become more error-free, providing greater transparency to customers, and enhancing their experience. Join us and discover how Cognine is tackling the significant challenges faced by industry players. 

About Client: 

Our client is a 3PL firm in the US focused on freight management solutions that arranges full truckload, expedited and LTL shipments for customers through its brokerage divisions. It provides customized transportation solutions for every size. 

Problem Statement:  

  • Client followed a manual process for invoice settlement. The process was repetitive, cumbersome and it involved interactions with multiple systems to fetch documents like PoD, BoL’s, Invoices, and delivery proofs. 
  • The amount must be fetched from these invoices and entered Salesforce portal, check for any variance as per the pre-agreed price and process the invoice. 
  • Client works with more than 50 carriers and the entire process was manually intensive, repetitive and error prone. 
  • Client also needed a solution to ensure compliance with industry standards and regulations by automating checks and validations to reduce the risk of noncompliance penalties.  
  • Client required a program to work around the clock, making it ideal for tasks that require constant attention. The program was expected to complete tasks much faster than humans, making the workflow efficient and cost-effective. 

    Solutions Provided by Cognine: 

    • Cognine started working with the client to implement an RPA solution that can streamline and automate time-consuming and repetitive operations like data entry, invoice processing, shipment tracking, and order management. 
    • Our team has identified an initial project within the invoice processing for one of the carriers and started documenting the manual as-is process. We have then implemented a POC to win the confidence of the client and to prove RPA is the ideal automation strategy. 
    • Unattended bots were implemented to automate certain tasks without any human intervention. These bots were programmed to complete a specific task or set of tasks, often in a repetitive manner. 
    • Based on the results from the POC, we have scaled up the implementation to other process like compliance and Manifest. Cognine has helped client automate 10+ processes across for more than 20 carriers. 
    • With the help of UiPath Orchestrator, we scheduled the execution of automated processes and monitored their progress, including detailed logs and analytics. 
    • Cognine introduced Semi Structured invoice data reading to be able to extract invoice data that was unstructured. We created around 5-6 rules to extract the exact amount. 

      Technology Used: 

      Results: 

      Conclusion: 

      • Automation increased the efficiency and streamlined operations by automating repetitive and time-consuming tasks, reducing the time required for order processing, inventory management, and shipping. 
      • Automated systems reduced the likelihood of errors and mistakes, leading to fewer shipping delays, fewer lost or damaged goods, and improved customer satisfaction and enhanced accuracy. 
      • Real-time visibility into inventory levels, shipping status, and other critical information, enabled the client to make data-driven decisions and improve their overall operations.

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      Categories
      Finance

      Transforming Financial Operations Through Technology

      Today, business and technology are inextricably linked. And keeping pace with the emerging technology landscape can be difficult for even the most tech-savvy leaders. This case study dives deep into the challenges faced by the client in terms of manual and time-consuming financial processes, lack of data insights, and increased risk of errors followed by describing the solutions provided by Cognine that enhanced the overall functional efficiency of the client. 

      About Client: 

      Client is an American financial technology company that creates and provides financial advisors with wealth management tools and products. Their flagship product is an advisory platform that integrates the services and software used by financial advisors in wealth management.

      Problem Statement: 

      • Client receives the customer data related to transactions, accounts, open positions, and other financial data in various formats from custodians such as Pershing, TD Ameritrade, Schwab etc. which made it difficult to analyze, understand and reuse it.  

      • Client receives more than 100 GB of incremental data on daily basis on to their on-prem servers which has computing challenges.

      • Most of the reports and metrics were shown in a tabular format, which were not providing enough insights and were not supportive for decision making.

      • Ensuring data quality of the large sets of incremental data had become cumbersome and was affecting downstream systems. 

      • There were architectural issues causing latency in the conversion of raw data into customer consumable data. 

      Solutions Provided by Cognine: 

      • Cognine provided a highly scalable and robust architecture that supports various file formats with different sizes & data volumes which automated and improved client’s financial workflows, real-time data visibility. 

      • The new multi-layer (staging, standardized, curated) and multi-tenant architecture supports ETL operations to run parallel and different teams can access data at different layers based on their needs.

      • An event driven micro services architecture ensured the data load into targets without delay. Implemented configurations at environment and object level, such that very minimal changes are needed during the deployment. 

      • Embedded Collibra DQ to monitor the DWH jobs and notify users based on the requirement. 

      • Cognine analyzed the business requirements for their analytical needs, designed data models and developed reports. Implemented CI/CD functionality for auto deployment processes. 

      Technology Stack Used: 

      Implementation: 

      Benefits/Results: 

      Improved Data Accuracy And Increased Productivity:

      Cognine successfully automated Normalization of files through UI. With the help of React UI the user can upload file metadata information and download the Normalizer file. Previously, each Normalizer file required manual development. Post automation, using the new UI, users can develop up to 20 Normalizer files at one time which saved user’s time largely and boosted efficiency. 

      Reduced Processing time:  

      We introduced a centralized library for standard logging where we implemented logging format for different steps and saved them into CloudWatch. 

      Quantitative Data Management:  

      There was a huge scale-down on manual intervention on client-specific data extraction. 

      Quick Decision Making:  

      Data insights  fostered the client to take quick decisions based on the highly sophisticated visuals 

      Conclusion: 

      • Data insights are helping the business to take quick decisions based on the highly sophisticated visuals.  

      • Manual intervention on client specific data extraction came down extensively as we were able to automate the functionalities. 

      • Automating the on-boarding & processing of new client requests was made as easy as just a click and go. This is helping to scale up client’s operations. The marketing team can utilize this to grab the attention of new prospects. 

      • Latency of accessing data from Analytical system has been reduced tremendously, it was scaled down to multi-folded level. 

      • The cost of the DWH layer has been reduced nearly half per month. This gave financial freedom to the business. 

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