Automated Freight Exception and Customs Processing Engine
CYVERRA designed and deployed an event-driven automation platform to standardise cross-border documentation and streamline freight exception workflows. The deployment eliminated repetitive manual data entry and reduced clearance delays across ten international transport hubs.
Global multimodal freight forwarding operator
- -72%
- Customs filing turnaround
- -58%
- Exception resolution time
- -41%
- Demurrage penalty costs
- 84%
- Straight-through document rate
The Challenge
The operator managed high-volume multimodal freight movements across European and Asian corridors, relying on disparate Transportation Management Systems (TMS) and legacy Warehouse Management Systems (WMS). Cross-border consignments required manual cross-referencing of commercial invoices, bills of lading, and import declarations against fluctuating customs compliance rules. Operational teams spent significant manual effort reconciling data discrepancies across disconnected carrier portals and customs brokers. When shipment discrepancies occurred—such as weight mismatches, missing harmonised system (HS) codes, or transit delays—exceptions were routed via uncoordinated email chains, leading to missed customs windows, costly port demurrage fees, and degraded delivery SLAs.
Our Approach
CYVERRA architected an event-driven business process automation layer integrated with the client's core TMS and partner APIs. At the foundation, an intelligent document processing (IDP) pipeline was deployed to ingest, extract, and validate customs declarations, airway bills, and shipping manifests using targeted machine learning extraction models. To manage real-time transit variances, CYVERRA implemented an automated workflow orchestration engine powered by Apache Kafka and Camunda. This engine dynamically evaluates consignment status feeds, automatically applies rule-based validation checks, and triggers programmatic corrections for low-risk anomalies while escalating complex compliance variances to specialised desk agents with pre-compiled context.
The Outcome
The automated engine transformed cross-border processing from a high-touch bottleneck into an automated, straight-through operation. Consignment documentation validation that previously took hours is now executed within seconds, drastically reducing port hold-ups and compliance rejections. By centralising exception handling into deterministic, auditable digital workflows, regional operational units achieved predictable turnaround times during peak shipping volumes. The platform also provided real-time visibility into vendor documentation accuracy, allowing the operator to enforce compliance standards with upstream partners.
Technology used
- Camunda Platform
- Apache Kafka
- Python
- Azure AI Document Intelligence
- PostgreSQL
- AWS Lambda
- Docker
CYVERRA converted our most complex, document-intensive cross-border lanes into an efficient, largely touchless operational workflow.