How Customs Brokers Can Use Digital Solutions to Elevate Their Output

Within the world of transport and logistics, speed dictates success. This is true from one end of the supply chain, where freight forwarders race against time and each other to win more deals, to customs brokers vying for clients' shipping needs that they can use to scale and expand their operations.

This demand for fast turnover creates enormous ongoing pressure for customs brokers, who effectively play an important middle-man role between shippers and customs officials, as well as a dire need for accuracy to ensure the process is as seamless as possible.

An inaccurate customs report can be the difference between an important shipment or multiple shipments clearing customs and arriving on time or being delayed and creating a knock-on effect of delays along the supply line.

Undermining all of customs brokers' efforts to do the best job possible are several persistent obstacles and roadblocks that hinder productivity and profitability. How can customs brokers overcome these challenges?

The solution is digital and the application is (surprisingly) simple. Read on to learn how customs brokers can use digital solutions to improve their services and elevate their output.

Speed and Accuracy: What Every Broker Covets

There are two things that every customs broker needs on their side: speed and accuracy. Unfortunately, it's often difficult to get a hold of them, not because customs brokers are incapable of doing a great job, but because they face challenges to their output from nearly every direction.

Customs brokers have to wear more than one hat in their role. They have to be researchers, staying up to date with the latest custom compliance and regulation laws as they emerge in the countries and regions they manage, they have to be advisors to shippers needing assistance with their custom clearance processes, and they have to be the go-to communicators between shippers and customs officials who handle the clearance processes.

They don't just do this for one client, they do this for all their clients.

It's clear now why customs brokers have to rely on speed and accuracy - and why there's so much margin for possible error. Customs brokers have to work with commercial invoices, translating them into customs entry forms that need to pass clearance standards.

Customs brokers receive scans, pictures, and even faxes of invoices from shippers. They then have to manually analyze the data on these invoices, extract the raw data and input it into a separate customs entry form. This takes a lot longer in reality than it should.

Often, brokers have to pour over invoices that are poorly scanned, dark, unreadable, in another language, or missing vital information. They then have to follow up with shippers if need be to hunt down the necessary data or use their value judgment to estimate what the missing data is, manually type data in another language to get the translation or use photo editing software to improve the picture quality.

All of this takes time - time they could otherwise be using productively. Once they've created the necessary customs entry form, they send it to the customs officer who has to review it. Any edit, mistake, miscalculation, or missing information means the form is rejected and sent back to the broker who has to start the process all over again.

In the meantime, he or she has to turn incoming business away because of capacity problems and clearance form issues.

How Can Digital Solutions Help Brokers Break Through Legacy Ceilings?

It's clear that customs brokers spend a good portion of their time on things that are not the best use of their time. Brokers are bogged down by the smaller details of every shipping task they need to complete, preventing them from focusing on any bigger picture issues.

But how can brokers manage their shipping and clearance procedures with speed without sacrificing quality and accuracy?

AI and automation, when harnessed the right way, can provide an effective end-to-end solution. An AI-powered software with machine learning capabilities can do everything that a broker can do in far less time and with far greater accuracy and efficiency.

Using AI to automate the customs entry form creation process, customs brokers can scale their operations with ease and take on more shippers without worrying about the quality of their output.

An AI tool can scan the data of an incoming shipping invoice, cleanse and extract this data and input it directly into a structured clearance form that can be forwarded to clearance officers.

Any missing or incorrect information can be filled in using predictive analytics, thus preventing brokers from being bogged down by having to chase shippers for pesky, missing data.

Accurate clearance forms created by machine learning mean clearance is granted more quickly, speeding up the process and allowing brokers to become more competitive.

By embracing automation in their operations, customs brokers can confidently take on more clients, scale their business and grow their bottom line, breaking through enduring legacy ceilings made up of inefficient processes.

Conclusion

The type of digital solution you opt for as a customs broker can make or break your ability to break past legacy obstacles holding your business back. Relying on disconnected tools that don't speak to each other means you're effectively creating more work for yourself.

You should be looking for an all-in-one tool that solves all your operational challenges at the same time.

Stargo is a cloud-based solution that harnesses AI and deep learning to convert unstructured data to structured data in seconds, paving the way for the digital revolution in the supply chain.

With the power of StarDox, customs brokers can transform their processes and output. Using AI and machine learning, Stardox:

• automatically extracts commercial invoice data.
• Cleanses and structures unstructured or inaccurate data.
• Converts and inputs the data into accurate customs clearance forms.

Sign more clients and win more deals with fast, accurate data structuring driven by A.I.

If you're a customs broker ready to elevate the quality and quantity of your business output, chat to us about your needs. We'll discuss how Stargo can help you get where you want to go.