Toomas Veskus, Onninen's Baltic logistics manager, reveals why they decided to start using Cargoson and how the application has benefited the company.
Onnien AS
Onninen has been in business since 1913 and offers a wide range of material and information flow solutions to contractors, industry, government organizations and retailers. Onninen is part of the Kesko Group's international construction and technical trade division, which operates in eight countries and employs a total of 17,000 trade professionals.
Why did you decide to start using Cargoson?
We were just looking for such a solution when Cargoson turned to us. As we have quite a few people whose job includes arranging the transport, we needed a solution that would simplify this process. Everything happened by e-mail, but it became complicated because there are many parties and we are working in two shifts - in the end it was no longer understood whether some issues had already been addressed, are being addressed or are just beginning to be addressed. In the meantime, we tried to solve the problem using our intranet, but it wasn't quite that, because we had to ask for important information, such as information about picking up goods or other, by e-mail and enter it into the system manually. It was all a pretty long process. In the case of Cargoson the carriers enter the data themselves, and this is an important time saving for us.
What benefit has Cargoson shown already?
In addition to an overview of the work process, an important plus for us is also the statistical summaries that we can create with the help of the software - for example, information by shipments and countries, or information about how much we have used someone's services. Of course, saving time also means saving money, and although we have not calculated this precisely, it is safe to say that without Cargoson, there would probably be more people at work who would keep an eye on the whole process and bring the content of conversations to common Excel spreadsheets. Cargoson is doing this work automatically for us.
What is important to Onninen when choosing carrier and have you changed your preferences since the introduction of Cargoson?
Accuracy, keeping promises and, to some extent, speed are important to us. Price is, of course, an important criterion, and the price base also allows Cargoson to compare providers. We cooperate with about a dozen carriers and it cannot be said that the circle of our partners has changed very much, but still to some extent.
Which companies would you recommend to use Cargoson?
Mainly for companies with a lot of shipments. For us, the cooperation with Cargoson has been very positive, and as a developing company, they have met many of our needs and made important innovations for us. For example the possibility of adding an truck license plate number. We use Cargoson on a daily basis and we are completely satisfied with both the solution and the company's communication.
