The client provides international freight forwarding services for both air and sea cargo movements. Based in Israel, they support shipments moving through multiple countries and work with a broad network of airlines, shipping lines, and global trade routes. In their daily operations, they use a proprietary logistics portal to manage large volumes of freight paperwork, including Bills of Lading (B/L), Air Waybills (AWBs), packing lists, and commercial invoices.
The client needed data processing services to handle a high volume of freight documents and enter the extracted data into their proprietary logistics portal. The process required document digitization, data validation, and structured portal submission.
The three document types in scope were:
All three document types required cross-verification with supporting documentation before portal submission. Certain portal fields accepted only carrier-specific formats, requiring the team to apply document-type-specific entry rules for every record.
The project brought together two challenges: highly non-uniform input documents and a portal architecture that prevented error correction after submission (i.e., certain fields in the client’s portal could not be modified once data had been entered and submitted). This meant that every decision had to be correct on the first attempt, making standard document processing services insufficient without logistics-specific controls.
Our data processing team approached this engagement as a knowledge-intensive workflow that required structured methodology and built-in quality controls at every stage. The solution combined intelligent document processing tools with trained human review to handle document variability on the front end and prevent errors before they reached the portal.
Before processing began, team members were intensively trained in international freight workflows, carrier-specific document conventions, Incoterms, container code structures, and the client’s portal. By the time production started, the team could accurately interpret Bills of Lading from unfamiliar carriers without escalation, reducing onboarding lag for each new shipping line to near zero.
Separate Standard Operating Procedures were made for AWBs, Ocean Bills of Lading, and freight invoices. Each SOP defined field identification logic, disambiguation rules for low-confidence reads, and escalation thresholds for edge cases, including multi-leg shipments, co-loaded containers, and split invoices.
Incoming documents received via email were classified by type on receipt and assigned to dedicated processing queues. AWBs were flagged immediately to ensure compliance with the two-hour SLA. This intake structure supported consistent handling of large volumes of shipment documentation.
We used OCR tools to turn scanned PDFs into editable text. Team members reviewed and corrected low-confidence fields, such as handwritten entries, non-Latin characters, and sections affected by degraded scan quality. This approach blended intelligent document processing to improve reliability while keeping human oversight.
The extracted data was entered into the client’s logistics portal using document-type-specific field-mapping templates. These templates helped easily translate source document fields into portal fields, applying the correct format and carrier-specific conventions, ensuring consistent and accurate data entry across all document categories.
A dedicated QA reviewer checked each entry against the source document before submission. The reviewer confirmed field completeness, logical consistency, and correct formatting. This step was critical for validating the invoice and ensuring the accuracy of locked fields.
With locked portal fields and no path to correct submitted data, the most critical outcome metric was zero post-submission corrections. We delivered this consistently across 12 months of high-volume production.
Zero Portal Corrections Maintained across the full engagement, confirming the effectiveness of the pre-submission QA model and the team’s first-pass accuracy controls.
98.5% First-Pass Data Accuracy Sustained across Air Waybills, Bills of Lading, and freight invoices throughout the production period.
60% Faster Processing Turnaround Achieved against initial benchmarks through more mature SOPs and OCR-supported extraction workflows.
4,500+ Documents Processed per Month Handled across all document categories, with quality levels maintained even at higher throughput.
3x Increase in Processing Capacity The team expanded from 2 to 6 specialists within 12 months, allowing monthly document volume to scale without compromising quality.
Do you need specialized data processing services for freight documents, freight bills, freight invoice processing, and related freight billing management tasks?
From AWBs and Bills of Lading to invoice checks and shipment documentation, SunTec Data helps logistics companies build dependable workflows with document processing support, IDP capabilities, and a team of domain experts. Validate our service quality with a free sample.
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