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 (Inquiry, Offer, Opportunity, Tariff) 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 (MBL, HBL, MAWB, HAWB, Switch HBL) with dedicated sub-tables for routing, party addresses, and charge accounts.
- 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, with a full upload audit log and the ability to scope negotiated rates to specific contacts or groups.
- Compliance-Ready Invoicing & Automated Document Generation: Delivered GST (SGST/CGST/IGST) and TDS-aware invoicing, multi-currency exchange-rate handling, and a cheque-request-to-payment-receipt workflow, alongside on-demand generation of over two dozen shipment documents — bills of lading, booking and arrival notices, delivery orders, and accounting summaries — rendered straight from shipment data.
- Closed-Loop Rate Requests & Scheduled Operational Guardrails: Automated capture of carrier replies to outbound rate-request emails back onto the originating offer record, and added scheduled jobs for offer expiry, free-days expiry flagging, and cross-database user synchronization to keep operational state self-correcting.
Results
| Metric Component | Before Solution (Legacy / Manual Processes) | After Solution (Platform Deployment) | 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
- Inquiry & Opportunity Tracking: Full attachment and status-history trails on both Inquiries and Opportunities let sales teams trace every customer touchpoint end-to-end.
- Offer & Rate Request Engine: Offers link directly back to their originating Inquiry or Opportunity, support pricing slabs and service-provider comparisons, and dispatch outbound carrier rate requests with automated reply capture.
B. Route-Level Tariff, Charge & Sharing Management
- Bulk Tariff Ingestion: An Excel parser bulk-loads country, port, airport, and city-level tariffs with per-charge-line detail and a full upload audit log.
- Controlled Rate Sharing: Tariffs can be scoped and shared to specific contacts or groups, keeping negotiated rates confidential to the right customers.
C. Multi-Modal Shipment & Consolidation Management
- Mode-Aware Serial Generation: Standardized reference numbers are issued per transport mode (Air/Land/Sea) and per branch, using atomic yearly counters that eliminate duplicate or skipped references.
- Master/House Bill Hierarchy: Multiple customer shipments aggregate into one master container, with dedicated support for MBL, HBL, MAWB, HAWB, and Switch HBL document variants, each with its own party-address, routing, and charge-account sub-tables.
D. Financial Ledger, Invoicing & Automated Document Operations
- Compliance-Ready Invoicing: Invoices compute SGST, CGST, IGST, and TDS automatically, with multi-currency exchange-rate handling (including per-contact custom rates) and a full cheque-request-to-payment-receipt workflow.
- Automated Document Generation: Over two dozen database-templated shipment documents — bills of lading, arrival and booking notices, delivery orders, and accounting summaries — render on demand via Thymeleaf and OpenHtmlToPdf directly from shipment milestones.
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. What began as a set of disconnected, manual processes is now a single, auditable system that enforces branch-level data boundaries, generates consistent references and documents automatically, and closes the loop between carrier quote requests and the CRM record that triggered them.
