Order 4471: please confirm delivery date
Agents for the freight invoice that gets checked too late.
Tuesday lunchtime in the planning office. The phone is ringing and there are twelve transport orders in the inbox as PDFs. The third one has no house number. At the same time, a subcontractor sends in last month's freight invoices, and a consignee reports a damaged pallet with two photos taken on a phone. In logistics, everything arrives at once, through portals, EDI and email. Whatever doesn't fit into the TMS is keyed in by hand or left to wait. We want an agent to take on exactly this work, before your planners have even picked up the phone.
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Where your time goes today
Our planners copy orders from customer emails into the TMS by hand. One in three is missing a house number or a delivery window.
We only get round to checking subcontractors' freight invoices weeks later. Matching them to the orders is manual work, and something more urgent always comes up.
To handle a damage claim we need the photos, the consignment note and the handover record, and they are spread across four different inboxes.
Six processes an agent can take on here
Each one sets out what comes in, what the agent checks, what goes out and when a person has the final say. Your own process will have its quirks, and that is the one we want to hear about.
Enter and plan a transport order
IntakeA transport order by email, PDF or portal with the collection address, the load and a time slot. Something is often missing.
DecisionThe agent completes the address and checks for dangerous goods and dimensions, then allocates the order to a route or a subcontractor.
ResultA complete order in the TMS with a suggested route and the price from the customer's rate card.
Audit a freight invoice against the order
IntakeA subcontractor's invoice with line items, surcharges and reference numbers, as a PDF or a photo.
DecisionThe agent sets the line items against the order, the rate card and the proof of delivery, and flags anything that doesn't match, such as waiting time or a toll surcharge.
ResultAn audit record with a recommendation to approve. If something is wrong, a draft dispute to the subcontractor that sets out the reasons.
Log and assess a damage claim
IntakeA damage report from the consignee with photos, the consignment number and a short description of what happened.
DecisionThe agent collects the consignment note, the handover record and the telematics data, and checks the liability limits under CMR or ADSp.
ResultA complete claim file with an assessment of liability and a draft reply to the customer.
Price a transport enquiry and prepare a quotation
IntakeAn enquiry by email or portal with the lane, the load and the requested date, often with only rough figures for weight and dimensions.
DecisionThe agent checks the customer's rates and the capacity on that lane, adds surcharges for tolls, dangerous goods or time slots, and calculates the price.
ResultA draft quotation with price, transit time and validity, set up as a job in the TMS.
Check the customs documents for a shipment
IntakeThe commercial invoice, packing list and proof of origin for an export shipment, usually sent by the shipper as three separate PDFs.
DecisionThe agent checks that the goods description, commodity codes, values and Incoterms agree across the documents, and whether anything is missing for the destination country.
ResultA complete document set for the customs declaration, or a draft request to the shipper setting out exactly what is missing.
Allocate dock time slots
IntakeRequests from hauliers and drivers by email or a note from a phone call asking which dock they can use and when, with registration, load and shipment number.
DecisionThe agent checks the request against free slots, the type of load and the shipments you expect. It spots double bookings and deliveries that arrive without notice.
ResultA booked time slot, a confirmation to the sender and an up-to-date dock overview for the warehouse.
Your process is not on the list?
Then it is probably the more interesting one. Use our Process Check to describe what piles up every week in three sentences, and we will tell you honestly whether an agent could take it on.
Audit a freight invoice against the order
We would start with freight invoices. The rules for checking them are already in your rate cards, and the data is already in the TMS. Every error the agent finds shows up straight away in money terms, so you see the benefit within weeks rather than at the year-end close.
Our target80%of freight invoices should be checked automatically, with a record for every line item. Only the discrepancies go to a person.
Agentreads
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What the agent needs
The agent needs orders, rates and proofs of delivery from the TMS, along with telematics data, invoices from the DMS and your planners' inboxes. We hold this data together in Microsoft Fabric and OneLake. The consignment number is the key: with it, the agent finds the same shipment in every source.
Typical systems in your industry
SAP TMTransporeonCarLoMicrosoft Dynamics 365DocuWareMicrosoft 365
What it looks like in practice
Questions logistics companies ask us
We already use EDI with our large customers. What does an agent add?
EDI works well, and it stays. The agent handles everything that doesn't come through EDI: the emails, PDFs and portals of your smaller customers. That is where today's manual work comes from.
How does the agent cope with subcontractors who have no system at all?
That's the norm, and it's no problem for the agent. It reads their invoices and paperwork as PDFs or photos and matches them to the order. It drafts any queries, and a person sends them.
Can the agent approve invoices by itself?
Only within the limits you set, for example an exact match under 500 euros. Everything else goes to a person. Every approval is logged, whoever gave it.
What if we change our TMS?
The agent stays where it is, because its logic lives in Azure and Fabric. Connecting a new TMS means adapting an interface, not starting a new project.
What challenge is your business facing?
Your challenge is what interests us most. Send us a few lines about it. We will look at it free of charge, based on the systems you use today, and tell you honestly whether an agent is worth it.
