The challenge
Documentation was re-keyed between the warehouse system, the broker, and the port three times per shipment.
Our approach
Documentation was being re-keyed three times per shipment — into the warehouse system, into the broker portal, and into the port system. Each re-key was a chance for a transposition error, and errors at the port cost days.
Rather than building three more point-to-point connections, we put an integration layer in the middle and moved the existing connections onto it in priority order.
“We have added six integrations ourselves since handover. That was not true of anything we bought before.”
What we built
One canonical shipment-document record, published once and consumed by all three downstream systems. Schema validation at the boundary rejects a bad payload loudly instead of forwarding it quietly.
Mappings are declarative and reviewed like code, and monitoring names which integration failed and what it was carrying, so triage does not start with a search.
- Kong Gateway
- Apache Kafka
- PostgreSQL
- Kubernetes
- Grafana
Results
Customs clearance time fell 46% within six months. Forty-plus systems now run through the layer, and the operations team got back the equivalent of 2.1 full-time roles that had been absorbed by re-keying.
The client has since added six integrations without involving us, which is the measure we actually care about.
What’s next
A customs pre-clearance pilot with two destination markets is planned for the next financial year.
Figures are taken from the client’s own reporting and published with their permission. We will introduce you to them on request.