A public site in the forwarder’s name, and a login behind it.
Sixty-five screens in three parts: a public site that carries the forwarder’s company name, the screens a customer sees after signing in, and the inbox where the desk answers every form they submit.
What it replaces
Most of this is somebody’s inbox today.
Three audiences, one record underneath.
The site itself
Company pages under the forwarder’s own name and branding, plus the notices posted when a terminal closes or a rate changes.
Tracking and lookup
Anyone with a number can track a shipment, and look up an e-AWB or a proof of delivery without an account.
Quote and pickup requests
Two forms a stranger can fill: a request for a price, or a request for collection. Both land in the same staff queue.
After signing in
Shipments in progress, quotations waiting to be accepted, shipment requests, pickup booking, rates and an address book.
Documents and invoices
The documents on their shipments, and the invoices that still carry a balance.
The back office
Every submission in one queue: assign it, answer it, mark it spam, or convert it into a quotation or a pickup.
A stranger asks → the desk answers → the customer accepts.
Someone fills the quote request form
Lane, commodity, weight and volume, in their words, on the forwarder’s public site.
It arrives in the staff inbox
One queue for every form on the site. Somebody owns it by name, or it is marked spam.
The desk converts it into a quotation
Priced from the rate tables in QMS, against the margin rule for that customer class. Nobody re-types the lane.
The customer signs in and accepts it
The accepted quotation becomes the shipment. From there they watch it, open its documents, and later open its invoice.
Every form on the site ends up in one queue.
One queue rather than five inboxes and a shared password. This is the staff side, redrawn — the same rows, the same words.
| Received | Form | From | State |
|---|---|---|---|
| 08:14 PDT | Quote requestLAX → ICN, 3 pallets | Kim Trading Cohas an account | Unassigned |
| 08:02 PDT | Pickup requestVernon, Thu after 14:00 | Vela Imports | Converted → pickup |
| 07:51 PDT | Tracking questionno number given | —no account | J. Ruiz |
| 07:36 PDT | Quote request“SEO services” | — | Spam |
| Yest. 17:20 PDT | Document requestPOD for HBL AMC-0417 | Sun Lighting LLC | Answered |
Two of these are not customers.
A public form takes whatever the public types into it. One row has no tracking number, one row is an offer of search engine work, and one row is from a company with an account who could have looked the document up themselves. The queue shows all four kinds the same way, because sorting them is the job — and a queue that quietly hides the awkward rows is a queue nobody trusts by Thursday.
The other five already know this record.
SCM
The quotation the customer accepts is the one the desk built. The invoice they open is the one billing produced. Neither is a copy.
QMS
Prices come from the buy and sell tables, inside their validity dates, with the margin rule for that customer class already applied.
ABI
ISF, AES and AMS sit on the same shipment. CBMGO prepares the records and reads the responses back. CBMGO does not transmit to CBP.
LiveTrack
Stage 1The same portal installs on the customer’s phone and pushes four events, each one opening the tracking page for that shipment.
WMS
The proof of delivery the driver captured — photo, signature, GPS — is the one the public site hands back on a POD lookup.
The platform
Six systems on one record. Only the systems needed are bought, and the rest are added a system at a time.
Asked about the portal.
Whose name is on the site?
What does the portal cost?
Where do the form submissions go?
Do our brokers and overseas agents get screens too?
Forty-five minutes on a real shipment.
One shipment is taken from quotation to invoice on a demonstration company, with a sign-in as the customer to show what they would see. Difficult lanes are welcome. The session ends with a written quotation.