‘Effective systems the difference between survival and failure’

A good computer system is no longer something on which a clearing and forwarding business has built up a dependency – it is the business nowadays, according to Werner Pretorius, the logistics system specialist at freight system operators, Compu-Clearing. “If you want to be successful in anything, be it warehousing, customs clearing or road transporting,” he said, “you need to have a fantastic system to back you up. “This is especially so in this current economic crisis, where time is money and you can’t afford the slightest mistake. It’s the difference between survival and failure.” A latest example of the Compu- Clearing system activities, Pretorius added, is a job they are currently conducting for the Swedish-based electronics specialists, Ericssons, developing an automatic ordering system for the company. “For those guys,” he said, “this is a serious contract. They’ve got anything between a couple of hours and the next day to produce the spare part needed for a client.” And that is a complicated process, with thousands of transactions a day having to travel through the system all the way from order placement to part delivery and installation – and every spare part needing to be instantly available within the time available. “You’d never be able to handle all these transaction records with a manual system,” Pretorius added. A computer system is no longer purely a glorified, electronic calculator – it’s part of your very business management policy. According to Pretorius, people are utterly reliant on a fast, accurate system – and it’s actually doing the thinking for them, telling them what they need to do next. “It all boils down to customer service,” he told FTW. “Keeping the customer happy nowadays, you need to ne able to up your service offerings by two-to-three levels just to compete, and meet the demand. “There’s just no time any more. The freight business is so time-instant. It’s just crazy fast. “Systems have to be equally instantaneous and utterly accurate. The very future of your business depends on it.”