Fracht France has adopted the Zen via conex™ solution, to digitise the processing of its customs declarations declarations and go 100% paperless
In 2023, Fracht France’s Customs service went paperless, equipping itself with ZEN via conex™. The arrival of the collaborative customs platform marked a revolution in terms of both customs processing practices and archive management, as confirmed by Sébastien Tanné, Customs Team Leader.
Fracht, a rapidly expanding customs business
The Fracht Group has been present in France since 2007, using the Conex customs declaration processing solution since 2011, when it opened its customs department. Fracht France is a freight forwarder and registered customs agent, handling all types of goods worldwide. A model of organisation originating in Switzerland, the company has been rewarded by continuous growth, the trust of thousands of customers of all sizes and in all sectors, and an impressive series of ISO certifications.
Driven by a powerful dynamic for development, within a global group with more than 2,000 employees in over 55 countries, Fracht France - which itself became a Group within the Group in 2018 - employs 120 people in France, and more than 180 people in West Africa and Oceania, through its 9 subsidiaries.
In France, employees are spread across 7 agencies and 2 warehouses.
The Customs department is developing in line with this growth, and now employs 12 declarants at the Tremblay-en-France and Strasbourg sites. The teams are multi-tasking, managing the import, export and transit of all goods, at either of the two customs clearance sites.
A unified software platform for processing data flows
Implemented in the autumn of 2023, ZEN via conex™ enables teams of declarants to work on a single processing platform that receives all the logistics, administrative and accounting documents (invoices, packing lists, etc.) sent by customers and third parties for goods to be cleared through customs or in transit.
“In the Customs department, our team of declarants used to receive 250 emails a day, with attachments or email transfers ... Over the last year, everything has changed: instead of this continuous avalanche of items to be opened, printed, read, typed... we have a single shared tool, ZEN via conex™, which channels incoming documents and enables partially automated processing. Incoming documents are analysed and processed semi-automatically, attached to the corresponding goods file, saved in the right place and with guaranteed integrity thanks to BlockChain technology,” explains Sébastien Tanné, Customs Team Leader at Fracht France. “We know who's in charge of a file, and where the declaration is at any given time. The process runs smoothly and is easier to supervise.”
ZEN via conex™ is interfaced with the company's ERP. In this way, operators can make a customs clearance or transit request to their declaring colleagues, which is immediately sent to the platform. The activities of the entire customs department are shared via this single interface, facilitating collaborative working and enabling one declarant or another to take charge of a file as it arrives. In addition to the Customs department, 70 employees throughout the company can access the ZEN via conex™ tool to communicate information they may have.
The platform is simple and intuitive, making it easy for the company's various business lines to learn to use it. The support and initial training provided by Conex, together with the ability to customise the interface for each individual workstation, facilitated the adoption of the tool and our change of habits.
Another step forward in efficiency for declarants has been the introduction of an intelligently integrated module, the OCR via conex™ workshop. With a view to pre-filling the declaration, all the documents that arrive in the interface are automatically analysed, to extract the relevant data that will populate the data fields previously entered manually. Implemented in the months following the installation of the platform, this new OCR processing module, which is self-learning thanks to AI, now handles the full range of invoice, purchase order and delivery note formats.... which arrive in the system from multiple international sources.
“The customs declarant saves an incredible amount of time, avoids multiple data entry and does a better job of supervision. No more highlighter pens, no more calculators! It's a radical change in the way things are done, with greater simplification, ease, fluidity and added value. The teams were immediately receptive, and change came about naturally”, says Sébastien. Tanné.
No more paper archives!
The other visible impact is a radical transformation in archive management. Many hours were saved, pure and simple, once the need for paper archives disappeared. The immutable and compulsory ritual of putting documents into folders, boxes and pallets, and sending them off to storage, is no longer necessary! In one fell swoop, on 30th October 2023, the office became “paperless”. There was no longer the need to take care of labelling the customs files with their bundle of attachments, making sure they're in the right place so that they can be found months, or even years later, in the event of verification requests...
By dematerialising archives, ZEN via conex™ has made it much easier to manage priorities. The savings are tangible: hours of filing, office supplies, cardboard boxes, labels, reams of paper, etc.
“The workspace is suddenly clear. You don't have piles of files waiting to be sorted and archived, and those bulky filing cabinets are no longer needed,” says Sébastien Tanné with satisfaction.
Living archives and a traced process
However, the bundles attached to declarations, which a customs department must keep in its possession for many years after the entries have been made, are still accessible and irrefutable. It is simply understood that they are stored digitally, and that they are saved automatically as they are processed. In fact, ZEN via conex™ keeps track of the entire workflow for processing Customs information. Entries are time-stamped, and the process that led to the customs declarations can be retraced even long afterwards.
Fracht France, committed to reducing its carbon footprint, obtained a very high level of Ecovadis certification in February 2024 - Silver Medal (sustainability rating)1. The Group has also won several trophies certifying quality of life at work (Top Work Places). ZEN via conex™ will contribute to further improving this performance.
