Overview
Brexit had just started. Ferplast were using multiple customs brokers and required exacting standards for preparation of declarations, with subtle changes to origin and preference of goods as their operations matured.
We were in the early stages of our service delivery, and our proprietary platform was new to the scene. We had secured a contract with a Customs Broker (our client) to provide a fully managed declaration outsourcing service. Our client was acting as one of many UK brokers for Ferplast.
Our ethos is continuous improvement coupled with excellent customer service and complete transparency of operations. This case study provided us with the opportunity to shine in improving our technology, fine-tuning our operational processes, improving our governance practices, and porting our ISO quality management processes into our new brokerage service. We collaborated closely with Ferplast as we worked to improve our service offering and resolve issues.
Challenge
Before our involvement, in January 2021, our client had raised multiple declarations as IMDs on behalf of Ferplast. Due to the large influx of work caused by Brexit, our client’s processes for declaration submission were unpredictable, poorly controlled, and reactive. The primary focus during this period had been moving shipments through the ports rather than accuracy. IMDs were not being converted to IMAs on arrival. Ferplast escalated the issue on 10th March 2021, stopping services and requesting a fast resolution.
Solution
When engaged by our client at the beginning of February 2021, we immediately switched all declaration submissions to our proprietary platform and released our management systems for control of operations. We spent the first two weeks of February prototyping the declaration process flow in our management platform. By mid-February 2021, we had achieved a reliable, transparent pipeline process for incoming declaration requests and governance rules for the preparation of declarations. This improved our client’s quality of service dramatically. We had achieved a solid go-forward providing a measure of our performance for continuous improvement.
Upon receipt of Ferplast’s escalation, we immediately deployed our Quality Management processes to our brokerage operations and raised an Incident. We maintained solid transparent communication with Ferplast throughout all stages of the incident investigation, impact evaluation, root cause analysis, and corrective actions through the successful closeout of the incident. The corrective actions addressed were as follows:
- Correction of Inaccurate Customs Entries: All erroneous declarations were pre-prepared. The results were shared with Ferplast for approval. Issues were reconciled, and operations and technical improvements were deployed. All variances were resolved with HMRC.
- Client HMRC Operational Knowledge & Improved On-Boarding: The incident showed that processing requirements for declarations were not captured sufficiently at the onboarding stage. This resulted in formulating a standard checklist to capture directives for declaration preparation.
- Operational Improvement: A key factor contributing to the incident was a lack of resources. By leveraging the efforts of releasing our management system, we were able to create a pipeline for the controlled increase of staffing without impacting our quality of service.
- Organisational Knowledge: We introduced quality control hold points in our declaration preparation for a senior review of the declaration before submission to HMRC.
- Technology Improvement: We extensively improved our technology stack by introducing directives, and inbuilt quality audit heuristics.
Benefit
We benefited massively from Ferplast’s diligence in the fastidious accuracy of declarations, and their willingness to collaborate with us closely throughout problem rectification. This case study provided the perfect vehicle for us to uplift our service standards, introduce structured quality control and advance our technology offerings.
Whilst we constantly review our practice for improvement and operate risk mitigation to avoid problems, we recognise that problems will always arise. We believe an organisation’s capability to address problems proactively and instigate corrective measures identifies them as high-performance operators.
Contact Us
Get in TouchWe’ll be in touch to help you
Contact information
Fill up the form and our team will get back to you within 24 hours.
-
Carpenter Court, 1 Maple Road, Bramhall, Stockport, Cheshire, SK7 2DH.