DHL Global Forwarding on CargoWise as a global TMS

CargoWise’s deep visibility, real-time data accessibility and global transparency have enabled DHL Global Forwarding to deliver consistent, quality service for their customers across the globe, says Tim Scharwath, CEO DHL Global Forwarding, Freight.

“Transparency is the name of the game in our business. Our customers expect that we are able to ship something from A to B, but they also expect us to be transparent and to have detailed information about the shipment, and CargoWise always gives us that transparency,” said Mr Scharwath.

DHL Global Forwarding is part of Deutsche Post DHL Group with more than 31,000 freight forwarding experts across more than 190 countries, providing air, ocean and overland freight forwarding services globally.

Since implementing CargoWise as their core transport management system (TMS), initially rolling out across ocean freight, DHL Global Forwarding have seen increased productivity, and improved integration, automation and communication across their global network.  

“I can very happily say that we've rolled out CargoWise to our entire ocean freight organisation. Our ocean freight organisation which used to be on our legacy system is now on the CargoWise system, together with the agents that used the legacy system’s certain functionality.

“On the air freight side, we are planning to complete the roll out in 2021. Our main operations will be then be managed uniformly via one system, which I believe is probably the fastest rollout of any freight forwarder of this size,” said Mr Scharwath.

When it came to the decision to outsource a solution versus building their own TMS in-house, it was CargoWise’s deep integrations and broad functionality that made it the most obvious solution for DHL Global Forwarding.

“We realised that we don’t have to do everything ourselves, by ourselves, so we looked for the best technical solution out there. We also asked ourselves, what drives our customers and what do we need to do in the future to be better? And with that in mind, we decided to go with CargoWise as our core transport management system.”

Recognising that implementing a new TMS globally is a significant change for the business, DHL Global Forwarding chose a gradual, phased approach to the CargoWise roll-out to allow the organisation to adapt to the changes.

“We deployed CargoWise in a controlled, but very well-established way to make sure that our organisation was able to follow the change. It was really important for us to ensure that our people were informed about why we were implementing certain systems so that they could embrace our transformation.

“In managing the coexistence of multiple systems, this was a bit tricky for us but I believe we managed it well with the utilisation of shared service centres that we have in various parts of the world, to ensure that data flowed correctly and that any manual changes were being actioned.”

Another key milestone in the organisation’s IT roadmap was the launch of myDHLi, a new digital offering that provides their customers with 360-degree transparency to manage their transportation needs.

“Without a modern system and modern architecture behind us, we would not have been able to provide this kind of data quality to our customers and that's where CargoWise played a really important role in our delivery of myDHLi.

“CargoWise helped us a lot in making sure that we can start this journey, and with this system in place, we now have a basis to really continue the transformation of our organisation and also how we want to work in the future,” said Mr Scharwath.