IAA shifts their level of satisfaction to pure happiness by changing to Scope
International Airfreight Associates is an independent and reliable partner in all areas of forwarding, air freight, sea freight, perishables, fresh and road. Focused on today’s modern logistics and headquartered at Schiphol Airport, one of Europe’s major gateways, IAA provides tailor made services for both export and import worldwide and door to door, offering overall solutions to shippers as well as agents. With an emphasis on responsibility, the company values people as by far its most important asset. Motivated, committed and highly trained, IAA personnel take pride in what they achieve as a team, keeping pace with the fast and ever emerging standards in the forwarding industry by constantly seeking new solutions.
Weakness vs. brightness
This approach brought Tony van den Brande, General Manager of IAA, into contact with Henk Boorsma of Riege Software The Netherlands. Tony's stated intention from the outset, was to outperform others by offering exceptional service at a fair price, treating customers and their possessions with respect, and attracting the best and brightest employees, and he could no longer to accept the weaknesses of IAA's existing the system.
The former system was even less appropriate for e-commerce operations. As a member of an e-commerce network and in order to find and acquire new partners in China, Tony needed substantial technological support by a powerful e-commerce solution.
No fright at freight but own courage
Apart from being unable to support e-commerce, the previous system caused a lot of double work in freight forwarding and in Customs. This particular pain point meant all sales and purchase invoices were generated by the operational system, but afterwards, were manually keyed into the separate accounting software Exact Globe. All this had to change.
“Frankly speaking, in the beginning I had sleepless nights switching to another system. Of course, the old one didn't work to my satisfaction, but it worked. Poorly and sadly, but it worked. I was impressed by Scope, but scared of the transformation and migration process. Would that work as well? Would I, would we all be happy in the end? Let me tell you, we were and still are.”
The end of sadness
With a few individual adjustments and the development of an e-commerce module, IAA went live with Scope January 1st, 2016. The Air Freight, Sea Freight and Customs modules of Scope are in use by IAA’s different entities: International Airfreight Associates, IAA Fresh, IAA Ocean and IAA Road.
While they started with 4 branches (1 in RTM, 3 in AMS) under 1 legal entity, IAA meanwhile uses Scope in 2 legal entities (IAA and Air Cargo Consultants) with 6 branches in total. The company is now able to create AGS Import declarations from CSV files which they use for incoming e-commerce shipments. The corresponding e-commerce integration works perfectly well. A spreadsheet containing all shipments from China with all relevant details is imported into Scope, and, combined with a Customs declaration template, ready to be submitted to Customs without correction or user interference.
The age of happiness
Since the implementation of Scope, IAA enjoys the speed and effectiveness of not only reacting but acting actively to their customers requirements. All packed into straightforward cooperation with comprehensive results for their freight demands.
Even the existing accounting system is seamlessly integrated into Scope. Today, with Scope all debtors, creditors, sales invoices, cost estimates and purchase invoices are simply interfaced to Exact Globe. Both systems communicate 100% accurately which is a huge time saver. And one more reason for sheer happiness.
“There was no doubt that Scope would fulfill IAA's requirements and change everything for the better. The real challenge was, would they be just satisfied or in the truest sense of the word - happy. When Tony confirmed – or rather expressed – he was, we were happy as well.”
Scope supports the operators at IAA in their day-to-day forwarding business and Customs handling. Forgotten are the days of double work due to endless manual rekeying. Using Scope saves IAA a tremendous amount of time and has put an end to no less tremendous frustration. On the contrary, everybody is happy, IAA staff, IAA customers and, of course, Tony himself who also is happy with himself for having made the right decision.