The phrases digitization and digitalization has been swarming around for quite a while. But still, the journey towards digitalization is fraught with many barriers and few adopters.
Barriers to digitization and digitalization are there due to many varied reasons. Most MNC companies have ERP systems that can transfer data to other systems. But in many cases, customers do not want to establish connections with their suppliers for fear of many reasons. Bookings and instructions still come via emails with attachments. So, the logical first step is to digitize the email attachments.
Take for instance cargo booking. While many cargo agents are already performing electronic booking with their carriers, very few shippers send their booking data via electronic exchange. The common practice is still to send a booking via email with the information present in the attachment in the form of Commercial Invoice and Packing List. In the traditional method, the booking agent will have to print the email and the documents in the email attachments and then perform data entry to get the information into their Freight Management System. This process repeats itself for outward Customs Declaration where the declarant will have to print the documents and perform data entry, again.
What data is relevant to one system may be not relevant to another system. The data available in the Freight Management System is insufficient for Customs Declaration and receiving in the WMS. But what is important is that all the data found in the Commercial Invoice, Packing List and Shipping Bill of Lading when fully extracted are relevant to many application systems.
In comes Sanbo’s Intelligent Optical Character Recognition (OCR). We can identify the source of the information as those appearing in the Commercial Invoice and Packing List – we digitize these data, host them on a platform and push them to the various application systems like Freight Management System, Customs Declaration System, Transport/Freight Management System etc.
Using the Intelligent OCR not only drives productivity, efficiency and sustainability, it also reduces the amount of manpower required. With the improvement in process, headcount maybe shifted to functions that are higher value-added than data entry. With the difficulty in hiring, this is sure a win-win proposition.
Sanbo Intelligent Technology Singapore Pte Ltd
Data from source is the goal. But when customers are not willing to share data electronically, one of the most effective way is to digitize the paperwork. This is the first step towards digitalizing the supply chain.
With Sanbo’s AI-enabled technology, we extract data from paper documents in various format, host the (digitized) data and pushes the data to other application systems to be used for Customs Declaration, Warehouse Management and Transportation/Freight Management. Visit us at https://sanbo.ai/ for more information and a free no obligation consultation.