CASE STUDY
Europe’ s largest customs clearance company, Customs Support Group, has succeeded in turning what once was a slow, paper-based industry – seen by most as a burden – into an efficient, reliable process capable of sharing tailored business growth advice.
Embarking on a pioneering digital journey, the customs broker has brought declarations processing up to speed with its logistics counterparts, using smart technologies like AI automation to reduce the bureaucratic burden for both clients and internal agents. In addition to reducing border delays and hefty fines introduced by errors in human data entry, this has freed up expert time to focus on value-added expert tasks, dealing with complex customs and trade regulations or supply chain efficiency.
How it all began
When the UK withdrew from the European Union back in 2020, there was an explosion of additional paperwork at customs. With queues, delays and heightened frustrations all threatening the future of trade since then, it was clearly time for advanced digital adoption.
Despite already leading the market with other kinds of CustomsTech, the group realised that, in order to truly move the industry forward, it would also need to integrate AI. By the end of 2024, it thus began testing AI-powered Intelligent Document Processing within its UK office. This constituted a revolutionary move for the customs sector.
“ The industry as a whole was very paper driven,” said Ian Featherstone, Custom Support’ s CDO.“ Logistics providers, freight forwarders and other key players are all issuing barrages of documents, which we set out to digitise to streamline the customs journey.”
Although AI-driven solutions in customs have long been in demand within the manufacturing and logistics sectors – with 42 % of big companies in these
WHAT ONCE TOOK A HUMAN DECLARANT
HOURS TO COMPLETE NOW TAKES JUST A FRACTION
OF THE TIME.
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