About the Client
Global Logistics Solutions Pvt. Ltd. operates as a multi-branch freight forwarding and logistics enterprise managing air, land, and sea shipments across multiple company entities and branch offices. Running cross-branch quoting, tariff, consolidation, and compliance-heavy invoicing (GST/TDS) on disconnected spreadsheets and siloed tools, the client needed a single, tenant-aware digital platform to run its entire quote-to-cash freight forwarding lifecycle.
Challenges
Prior to the platform, operations were spread across manual processes and disconnected spreadsheets, with no shared architecture to enforce data boundaries or consistency:
- Fragmented Multi-Branch Operations: Each branch and company entity ran in isolation with no enforced boundary between tenants, creating a real risk of cross-branch and cross-company data leakage.
- Manual, Error-Prone Reference Numbering: Air, Land, and Sea shipments each needed distinct serial formats per branch and service, assigned manually and prone to duplication or gaps.
- Complex, Route-Level Tariff Management: Pricing varied by country, port, airport, and city combination across all three transport modes, reconciled manually from spreadsheets and prone to quoting errors and slow turnaround.
- Compliance-Heavy, Multi-Currency Invoicing: GST (SGST/CGST/IGST), TDS, multi-currency exchange rates, and cheque-based payment reconciliation were all computed and tracked manually, increasing the risk of finance errors.
- Disconnected Carrier Rate-Request Communication: Quote requests sent to carriers and vendors by email had no systemic link back to the CRM or offer record, so replies were easily lost or mismatched to the wrong quote.
Tech Stack Overview
- Backend: Java 21 / Spring Boot 3.5.8, exposing a REST API under a dedicated context path.
- Database: MySQL, split into a dual-tier tenancy — a shared auth/master-data database and a per-company operational (freight-forwarding) database.
- Caching: Redis-backed service layer for tenant resolution and user-detail lookups.
- Project Management & Architecture: 1 Business Analyst (BA)
- Timeline: 8 Months
Solutions
The engineering team delivered a modular, service-oriented platform in Java and Spring Boot to close every one of these operational gaps:
- Dual-Database, Branch-Isolated Multi-Tenant Architecture: Separated the shared auth/master database from a per-company operational database, and enforced row-level branch isolation on every branch-aware entity via a validation check run after every read, update, and delete.
- Rule-Driven Serial Generation Engine: Built an atomic, per-year, per-branch, per-shipment-service counter system that issues standardized, collision-free reference numbers for Inquiries, Offers, and Shipments across Air, Land, and Sea.
- Multi-Modal Consolidated Shipment & MBL/HBL Architecture: Engineered a consolidation layer that rolls multiple individual shipments up into one master container, backed by a full Master/House Bill structure.
- Excel-Driven Tariff Ingestion, Pricing & Sharing Engine: Replaced manual tariff spreadsheets with a bulk-upload parser that ingests country, port, airport, and city-level rates directly into the platform.
- Compliance-Ready Invoicing & Automated Document Generation: Delivered GST and TDS-aware invoicing, multi-currency exchange-rate handling, and on-demand generation of over two dozen shipment documents.
- Closed-Loop Rate Requests & Scheduled Operational Guardrails: Automated capture of carrier replies to outbound rate-request emails back onto the originating offer record.
Results
| Metric Component | Before Solution | After Solution | Operational Impact |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reference Number Management | Manually assigned shipment, offer, and inquiry numbers across branches and modes | Atomic per-branch, per-mode, per-year serial counters | Eliminated duplicate or skipped references across Air, Land, and Sea |
| Tariff & Quotation Turnaround | Manual spreadsheet lookups across country/port/airport/city rate sheets | Bulk Excel-ingested tariff engine served instantly during offer creation | Faster, consistent quoting with a full upload audit trail |
| Shipment Consolidation & Documentation | Manual cross-checking to bundle multiple customer shipments under one container | Consolidated shipment model with full MBL/HBL/MAWB/HAWB document structure | Structured master-house bill hierarchy with automated document generation |
| Multi-Branch Data Governance | Shared systems with no enforced boundary between branches or companies | Dual-database tenancy with branch-ID-enforced row isolation on every service | Verified per-branch access control on Inquiry, Offer, Opportunity, and Tariff |
| Invoicing & Payment Reconciliation | Manual GST/TDS computation and cheque tracking across currencies | Automated GST/TDS calculation, multi-currency exchange engine, cheque-request workflow | Reduced manual finance reconciliation effort |
| Carrier Rate-Request Follow-up | Quote-request emails tracked manually; replies easily lost or mismatched | IMAP-based automated reply capture linked to the originating offer record | Closed-loop quote tracking tied directly to the CRM/offer record |
Core Features Delivered
A. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) & Inquiry-to-Offer Pipeline
Full attachment and status-history trails on both Inquiries and Opportunities let sales teams trace every customer touchpoint end-to-end.
B. Route-Level Tariff, Charge & Sharing Management
An Excel parser bulk-loads country, port, airport, and city-level tariffs, with the ability to scope negotiated rates to specific contacts or groups.
C. Multi-Modal Shipment & Consolidation Management
Standardized reference numbers are issued per transport mode and branch, with support for Master/House Bill hierarchy and multiple document variants.
D. Financial Ledger, Invoicing & Automated Document Operations
Invoices compute taxes automatically, with multi-currency handling and database-templated document generation rendered on demand.
Conclusion
By unifying multi-branch tenancy, multi-modal shipment handling, tariff management, and compliance-ready invoicing under one Java and Spring Boot platform, the engineering team modernized Global Logistics Solutions’ entire quote-to-cash operation. The system is now a single, auditable source of truth that enforces data boundaries and automates complex documentation workflows.
