“Qargo means we can stay in control of our destiny now and in the future.”
Founded in 1992, the Benelux-based transportation company has achieved great success by focusing on delivering exceptional customer service coupled with a commitment to self-reliance.
This has led to the family-built business thriving over the past three decades, resulting in six warehouses, a distribution centre and a fleet of over 20 vehicles operating across Benelux and the rest of Europe. However, despite this success, staying self-reliant was becoming increasingly difficult for Roosenboom due to mounting logistical challenges.
The core issue was a reliance on Excel to plan all trips before feeding the resulting data into a dedicated transport administration system. Perhaps predictably, this two-tiered approach took a team of workers several hours a day to manage effectively to ensure all trips could run smoothly.
Growing pains
Roosenboom knew the process needed a complete reboot. Ironically, the company had already been contacted by Qargo a year previously. However, though Roosenboom was impressed with the system, questions hovered over Qargo’s longevity as the company was still a start-up.
It wasn’t until Armin Geense, Roosenboom’s new project manager, arrived the following year that the hunt for a more effective solution began in earnest. “I started working on the project and did many hours of research,” Armin explains. “I ended up inviting 12 suppliers to demo their TMS systems – including Qargo – as it was important to see and assess many different systems.”
Stand out
Despite the competition, Qargo still stood out from the crowd as “many of the other systems had a look and feel that was trapped in 1996,” explains Armin. “However, we wanted a system that was fast, accessible and looked modern – and that was Qargo.”
He was also impressed with Qargo’s PDF reader for orders and purchase invoices. “They’re all inputted automatically,” says Amin. “This would free up our administrative employees to focus on other tasks because a whole layer of manual work could be stripped out – and just as importantly, the margin for input errors would be reduced massively.”
Qargo’s offering had also developed at speed since Roosenboom had last seen it. “You could see the platform itself was getting better and better all the time,” recalls Armin. “And crucially, Qargo the company was growing fast so any questions about its longevity were automatically answered: They were clearly here to stay.”
Qargo’s solution was very accessible to our employees both in look and feel.”
Testing times
With confidence in Qargo’s future now established, Roosenboom decided to partner up and the onboarding process began. “The process took place over five months and we had our own dedicated boarding manager who was really helpful and personable,” recalls Armin. “I also had access to Qargo’s sandbox mode so I could test and get to know the new system well, and ensure all settings were optimised for Roosenboom’s operations.”
When the system was ready to go live, Qargo personnel arrived onsite to ensure a smooth rollout and troubleshoot any problems. “Introducing a new system is always going to have some issues,” says Armin. “The great thing at the time – and it’s just as true now – is if there is a problem, bug or error that needs to be resolved, Qargo always responds in under 10 minutes and develops a solution quickly.”
The level of support offered by Qargo is excellent.”
On auto
As well as enjoying Qargo’s exemplary support, Roosenboom is also leveraging the platform to hone existing workflows and even create all-new processes, in-house and independently. For instance, Roosenboom proactively checks on its subcontractors, ensuring it is always aware of every individual’s status through out the day so the company can act quickly if there are any issues.
The problem? “Previously, this meant sending out an email to up to each subcontractor individually sometimes several times a day,” explains Armin. “However, within Qargo, we can send out queries in bulk automatically. This means a process that previously took half a day has now been slashed to 30 minutes.”
The ability to create such powerful functionality in-house coupled with the features currently under development at Qargo is what excites Armin the most about the future. “We have some new bespoke features being developed by Qargo,” says Armin. “And it’s this and the Qargo team’s ability to respond quickly to our requests that makes us very positive about the future. We can’t wait to see where we are in 12 months time!”
Qargo is moving forward every day, always offering us something new.”