Producing 3.7 million tons of paper and 1.12 million tons of paper pulp each year across ten mills, and employing over 5,600 people, Sappi Europe is a division of Sappi Limited, a South Africa-based leading global provider of pulp, paper, packing and sustainable wood fibre products and solutions.
Despite its dominant position within the market, Sappi faces their fair share of challenges. There is an ever-increasing supply in the market resulting in overcapacity and prompting the need for cost reduction and a greater customer focus to respond to B2B customers with increasing demands. As a result, they faced mounting pressures to digitize operations, with their supply chain being a key area of focus. The company also found that 50% of their customer service enquiries were “Where's my paper?”, demanding a significant amount of time and administrative effort.
Sappi’s main supply chain objective is to run “a sustainable and cost-efficient supply chain that monitors and manages end-to-end flows, requiring very little intervention.” Shippeo provided Sappi with a single platform to connect with over 300 forwarding agents and subcontracted carriers, allowing all supply chain collaborators to share the same real-time singular view of shipments. The platform also gives Sappi great flexibility to onboard carriers more easily and collect real-time insights on carrier performance. Sappi deployed Shippeo visibility across Belgium, The Netherlands, Italy, France, Germany, Austria and Switzerland, with 15 additional countries being added before the end of 2021.
Visibility also helps teams meet evolving B2B customer expectations by sharing more delivery information and at the same time reduces the number of contacts the customer service center receives. By being able to share automated notifications proactively on shipment statuses and delivery ETAs they are able to dramatically reduce the number of enquiries. This relies on highly accurate and reliable ETA predictions and Sappi has found Shippeo’s ETA calculation to be the most developed, taking into account more than 200 data parameters.
"Our customers rely on the timely delivery of our high-quality products to accommodate their production processes. By collaborating with Shippeo and our transportation partners, we aim to exceed our customers’ expectations by offering a predictable consistent and reliable delivery experience."
Implementing Shippeo’s visibility solution has allowed Sappi to automatically measure real delivery performance, in real-time. The objective data collected on location and delivery status empowers both Sappi and their carriers to find ways to increase efficiency and productivity at loading sites. The ability to share shipment ETA notifications directly with end customers provides additional value to customers, resulting in increased satisfaction survey scores with a more premium service offering. The reduction in customer team calls has also cut down on administrative tasks related to chasing order and delivery status, which in turn reduces associated costs.
Seeking supply chain optimization and increased customer service with regards to enquiries on the status of shipments to enable competitiveness in the market.
Allowing all supply chain collaborators to share the same real-time singular view of shipments.