Unit Journey from sea to store! Every vehicle import under control.

While some companies seek control over their own processes, in OSA we aim for involving all those who take part of the supply chain. Transcruz dared to forge the whole ‘Unit Journey’ along with IMCruz.

Imagine what can be done by gathering all suppliers, carriers, dealers, retailers and importers working over the same platform building a solid unit info background for sale!

This is what we call a full ‘Unit Journey’ and Viviana Gil, Chief of International Logistics at Transcruz, has been a key player in the endeavour for achieving a full journey ‘from sea to stores’. Today she’ll tell us about it.

Transcruz is a carrier company working closely with importer IMCRUZ, Derco representative in Bolivia. Each week they move around 40 internment transfer orders, transporting vehicle hauler trailers from north chilean ports, through customs at the border, up to Pre-Delivery Inspection yards (PDI). Besides they coordinate another 20 national transfers and a fleet of 3PL reinforcements if needed.

As the OEA Certification is about, Transcruz meets OSA thanks to our previous work with IMCruz. Not only they become aware of the fit between our solutions and their operation, they also realize that looking a little into the future, this could be the first step for building a valuable information common ground between client and carrier, improving accountability because, as the old saying goes, ‘short reckonings make long friends’.

Transcruz had a very intense day to day, filled with all sorts of paperwork. Each transfer operation involved at least a 15 minute call with each and every driver of the 50 trailer fleet.

“Every call was like, for instance, today you need to load X amount of units at the docks in Iquique,remember to check for counterfeit, etc. And Whatsapp didn’t help that much because all messages got lost in the timeline” - says Viviana.

“And that’s not all, then the drivers must share documentation validating border customs internment, then delivery receipts at the IMCruz PDI yard. I need to be chasing after them, telling them ‘Hey, you haven’t uploaded the evidence picture! I’m still missing last week’s MIC document! Is the transfer order finished?’ and then all over again for each transfer, and that’s not even counting errors, which trigger very long investigations by VIN within the ERP. I honestly feel like the drivers’ babysitter!”. - she exclaims woefully.

Attempts at digitalizing the operation were made at some point, but they all turned out to be information re-typing based, meaning additional logistics overload.

And sure, with half the day lost in customs processing, and the constant register of every process paperwork, the whole working day at customs was falling short. Besides, with every new trailer onboard, paperwork skyrocketed. If any register got lost within the week, it became impossible to catch it up.

Lately, OSA and Transcruz have been working on reversing this situation.
We’ve made all evidence and paperwork upload a requirement for every digital unit control, and now less people can do much more.

But most important, the drivers’ experience has greatly improved:

“At first, they didn’t like the idea. Now they keep calling me to assign them new transfer orders instead of fixing the last ones, and those calls make my day. OSA makes them feel they have the power to work by themselves, also granting them bookkeeping for their trips. We thought truck drivers weren’t up to the task, but oh they were!” - Viviana points out.

OSA has managed to establish a distribution framework for the whole transfer operation from port, through border customs, arriving at PDI yards, then distributing among internal PDIs, to finally stores and dealerships, all through our driver users.

Every single control at every landmark informs our platform, showing every requested vehicle’s progress, allowing unit tracking by status.

Viviana celebrates, “OSA is here to stay. The old method kept us working with no rest in sight. Maybe now I can finally take my well earned vacation!”