Hellman Worldwide Logistics UK
James Darlaston, Business and IS Solutions Manager at Hellmann Worldwide Logistics UK talks about his company’s recent migration to Sequoia, its advantages and benefits.
Hellmann Worldwide Logistics UK had a requirement to replace their existing custom clearance software and approached ASM.
James Darlaston states: “As a global provider of freight forwarding and logistics solutions in any mode of transport, air, ocean, road or contract logistics, Hellmann Logistics needs robust, dependable freight forwarding software. Our product areas are broad, ranging through agricultural, automotive, fashion, hi-tech, marine and perishable logistics, so providing our customers with a reliable service is paramount.”
“We implemented Sequoia towards the end of 2015 after a three month trial and migrated our perishable product division to Sequoia at the end of September 2015. We considered Sequoia because our existing customs software was based on old technology, which is due to become unsupported by the vendors in 2016.
Following the trial period with Sequoia its benefits were obvious, the feedback from our users and their user-experience was universally positive, so the decision to switch to Sequoia was an easy one to make.”
“One key advantage of Sequoia is the fact that it is truly intuitive. If you understand freight forwarding, which we expect our employees to do, then it’s extremely easy to use. As a result, the training sessions are short and our team picked up the operation of the system without any delay.”
“The switch to Sequoia went well, especially considering our complex infrastructure with our headquarters in Germany. Naturally, it took some work to get there but that was more down to our systems than ASM. The team from ASM invested considerable effort to ensure everything worked as expected.”
“The support from ASM is excellent, our customs clearances team have a good relationship with the ASM Help Desk and should any issues arise they’re always solved. During the time Sequoia has been up and running we haven’t experienced any technical issues as Sequoia has proved to be an incredibly stable solution, however if we did I’m confident we would get the same level of attention.”
“As long as our customers see a faultless service and they do, then I am happy. With Sequoia, our team productivity has increased, which you would expect because we’re comparing ‘state of the art’ with old technology, so we anticipated a significant uplift in productivity. Ten-year old software does not provide the flexibility and development options we require. We had to find a way to move forward to ensure the calibre of our service, Sequoia provided the solution.”
“Sequoia is a quantum improvement over our old system, jobs move through faster and repetitive keying is eliminated. Also, and this is important, Sequoia doesn’t let you make mistakes. It leads you through the processes, which is especially important when you have new people learning either the industry or the software. That’s the time when it’s helpful to have intuitive software that questions what you’re doing. Sequoia offers a level of reassurance that makes our life considerably easier.”
