People who swapped Excel for a platform explain, by name and company, what changed.
Read the full guide →Before, the shipment notes were kept in a physical folder: sometimes in pencil, someone would erase them, the folder would get lost and we didn't know what stage the shipment was at. With FollowNet we gained 30 to 40% of our weekly working hours, which gave me time to manage the process and make sure the agreed SLAs were being met.”
Translated from Portuguese. The video is in Portuguese.
Using a gaming analogy: there's the Atari and there's the PlayStation 5. Anyone not using FollowNet is still on the Atari. I can't see myself working without e.Mix today, and the customer doesn't need to ask me what's happening with their shipment.”
Translated from Portuguese. The video is in Portuguese.
I can no longer work the old way, with staff doing manual lookups. Today the information comes to me; I don't go to the screen. We did a study in the past and arrived at a 70% reduction, a very aggressive figure. Without the tool, I'd have to increase my headcount by at least 50% to justify the operation.”
Translated from Portuguese. The video is in Portuguese.
Manual input opens up countless chances for error. The invoice access key has 44 digits, which means 44 chances for error in a single key. With any other data, you multiply that. When you make a mistake, you break the chain, and the impact comes back as a snowball.”
Translated from Portuguese. The video is in Portuguese.
Before having a platform like e.Mix, we would have had to do everything manually, in Excel spreadsheets. FollowNet integrates with the main government agencies, with Siscomex and with the consenting agencies that issue import licenses. If I have 44 people, I might need twice or three times as many for the number of customers I have today, precisely because of the time saved through automation.”
Translated from Portuguese. The video is in Portuguese.
We had lots of tables, lots of Excel, and everything required input. It was cluttered, a sad thing to see. You'd clean up the Excel file and suddenly someone would ask about what you had cleaned up, and the history was lost. The main gain was having everything in a single tool, with a single access point.”
Translated from Portuguese. The video is in Portuguese.
Today we have a team of seven analysts, and each one had her own way of working her Excel spreadsheet. One updated it daily, another weekly, another every two days: there was no standard. We even joke that it was “God help us”.”
Translated from Portuguese. The video is in Portuguese.
The way we worked and looked up information was all very manual, all in spreadsheets. To get order and shipment information, I had to ask several analysts and check several spreadsheets to find out the status of the cargo, whether it had shipped and the situation of vessels and flights. When e.Mix came into our lives, all of that changed.”
Translated from Portuguese. The video is in Portuguese.
The main reason we looked for a tool was how hard management had become. Positivo was expanding rapidly, with activity growing across three plants, and managing all of that in spreadsheets was very hard. There was the growth in volume, the pace the operation demanded and the lack of visibility of everything happening at the same time. For a manager, it is very hard not to have visibility of what needs handling day to day.”
Translated from Portuguese. The video is in Portuguese.
Without e.Mix, it would be a step backwards. You get used to everything being automatic and you'd practically have to relearn. These are things the system does for you, and I'd have to review how they work, how to access Mantra and which fields I need to check.”
Translated from Portuguese. The video is in Portuguese.
This gave us much higher-quality information and, as a result, better customer service. You become more reliable, because the moment you have a person doing this, people make mistakes; there's no way to avoid it. And if the volume is very large, the chance of entering wrong information into the system increases.”
Translated from Portuguese. The video is in Portuguese.
It's hard to go back, given how technology has advanced and what the market demands. I can't picture myself typing up a shipment file or looking for information on paper. Everything in foreign trade, from the Federal Revenue to the government, has modernized: without a system to support you, you can't run the process. There are many systems on the market, but finding one that makes things easier and offers security and speed at the same time is hard. You would have to put together several systems, and e.Mix integrates all of that.”
Translated from Portuguese. The video is in Portuguese.
In the second phase, with the track-and-trace integration, we were able to completely eliminate manual work from the operation: everything via EDI, with every shipment automatically updated with its status. Today it's impossible not to have automated systems in a critical operation like transportation. No company is competitive without automation to reduce costs and offer fast, high-quality service. The only alternative is to put a lot of people on it, and all of them without making mistakes.”
Translated from Portuguese. The video is in Portuguese.
I worked with customers where I managed more than a thousand, two thousand shipments. If we had done it manually, the traditional way, going into each system to look up information, typing it into a spreadsheet and sending it to the customer, I would have spent much more on labor and probably wouldn't have met the customer's timing needs, because getting the information early is worth a lot to whoever manages the process.”
Translated from Portuguese. The video is in Portuguese.
I no longer have manual lookups; today they're all done by the system, through e.Mix. Financially, that lets me reduce physical structure and staff: our savings are around 40%, on top of the time we gained. Without the system I'd see myself back in the past, filling in and typing forms to file with the Federal Revenue and customs, going back 20 or 30 years.”
Translated from Portuguese. The video is in Portuguese.
When we didn't have e.Mix, it was very hard: everything was manual work, and we had to follow Mantra and Siscarga by hand. Today e.Mix checks and automatically sends a message to us and to our customers, reporting the cargo status through customs clearance and final delivery at the customer's plant.”
Translated from Portuguese. The video is in Portuguese.
Financially, we calculated about a 30% cost reduction, mainly in payroll and paper, because today everything is electronic. And e.Mix's service is always ready: there are online and phone channels, so whenever we have a question or need something, the contact is almost instant.”
Translated from Portuguese. The video is in Portuguese.
Every time I get criticism, I ask the person criticizing: if I pulled out the tool, what would it be like? I have several examples of people who say they couldn't do it anymore, because you go back three squares: you'd have to do all the lookups, which today are robotic and automated, by hand. You'd need more hands and you wouldn't have time to get it done.”
Translated from Portuguese. The video is in Portuguese.
I needed to control the shipments, so I did everything in Excel spreadsheets, with macros and every tool Excel offered to keep follow-up. I used the phone a lot and went from desk to desk asking how each shipment was going, and that took a lot of time: the whole morning went into just finding out the progress, and the actual work was left for the end of the day.”
Translated from Portuguese. The video is in Portuguese.
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