Volburg is a Latvian EMS company, working mainly in the Automotive and Industrial sectors. Its clients are primarily located in Scandinavia and Germany, as well as in Latvia. Volburg manufactures electrical units, parts and circuit assemblies to order. It supplies PCBs semi-finished so clients can test them before building them into their own finished products. The company also produces finished PCB, including automotive lighting such as number plate lights and interior lights. It delivers some of these to well-known brands, including McLaren, Volvo, and Scania.

Most shipments go out on pallets and some in boxes. Jevgēnijs Kulikovs, Volburg's production director, got to see the shipping process from the inside when he stood in for the company's logistics specialist for a week while Cargoson was set up.


The problem: three carriers, three separate windows, four hours a day

Before Cargoson, Volburg worked with three main carriers, each with its own portal. Getting a shipment out the door meant checking prices and delivery times with each carrier separately, one browser tab at a time, then comparing the results. "You would have to spend a lot of time checking one, how much and when they would deliver, then the second one, then the third," Jevgēnijs explains.

The comparison was manual and repetitive. They typed the same package dimensions into each carrier’s website, noted down prices and transit times by hand or took a screenshot, and sent it to a project manager for approval before placing the order. On top of that came customs handling. And whenever a client needed a status update, someone had to call the logistics specialist to find out which carrier they had used, log into that carrier's portal, retrieve the tracking number, and pass it on to accounting.

Altogether, Jevgēnijs puts the admin workload at around four hours a day. "That is the administration involved. It took a lot of time."


Why Volburg made the switch: good timing and a simple pitch

Volburg was not just browsing. Jevgēnijs already knew the shipping process took too much time, and he had started checking whether Volburg's ERP system, Monitor, offered its own carrier integration. Cargoson's outreach came at just the right time.

We knew our ERP had its own integration in some version, and we had started working on that side already. And right around that time, you appeared with your offer.

The pitch that convinced Volburg was simple: see prices and delivery times from all three carriers in one window instead of three. "It looked like it would be good, that we would be able to see everything, spend less time on this whole process, and that it would be efficient," Jevgēnijs recalls. Volburg decided to try it, and according to Jevgēnijs, it delivered exactly that.


What changed: one window, real-time visibility, and addresses that fill themselves in

Now that Cargoson connects to all three main carriers, Volburg sees pricing from each one as soon as it enters a shipment, instead of checking each carrier's website one by one. Volburg can also add other regional carriers when needed, but the three core providers cover most of its volume and already offer strong rates through the integration.

Two smaller features turned out to matter more day-to-day than Jevgēnijs expected.

The first is address autofill. Adding a new client used to take about an hour of typing in their name and address by hand. Now Cargoson shows saved addresses automatically when Volburg adds a new client, so all that is left is a quick confirmation.

It is a very good tool. Once addresses are saved, it saves us a lot of time.

When he stood in for the logistics role himself for a week, he found the whole process took about ten minutes.

The second is shared, real-time order visibility. In the past, checking a shipment's status meant calling the logistics specialist, providing an order number, and waiting for them to look it up and call back. Now the director, the logistics specialist, and the accounting team can each log into Cargoson and see exactly where any order is themselves.

I do not need to call the logistics specialist and ask. I can log into the system and see everything myself. That is my added value.

Volburg used to chase tracking numbers down carrier by carrier and pass them to accounting by hand. Now anyone who needs them can find them without a single phone call.

Volburg also uses third-party billing regularly, where a client ships under their own carrier account. In these cases, Volburg enters the client's account number and never sees the negotiated price. It simply confirms the order. "The shipment goes out, very simple and convenient," says Jevgēnijs.


The measurable impact: roughly half the admin time, and less chasing everywhere else

Asked to quantify the change, Jevgēnijs puts the drop at around 50 percent, roughly two hours a day freed up from what used to be a four-hour daily task. "Percentage-wise, that is a very good result," he says.

He also points out that the visible time saved is only part of the story. Departments no longer need to relay status information by phone, so the rest of the company now spends less time on the back-and-forth that used to come with every shipment.

There is invisible time saved, because everyone else no longer spends time calling around and looking for information. I cannot really quantify that, but I think we are saving a lot there too.


Onboarding: quick enough that support barely got involved

Getting started took very little help. Volburg's logistics specialist, Dmitrijs, connected several of the carriers himself without bringing in Cargoson's support team. "I was surprised that just one employee of ours could do that," Jevgēnijs says. "That is a good sign." Access rolled out naturally to everyone who needed it. Jevgēnijs, Dmitrijs, and Volburg's accounting team all now log in and pull the information they need directly.

Jevgēnijs points to shippers who send small, frequent parcels rather than pallets, including individual senders using services like Omniva. For these customers, price and delivery time are the only things that matter, and having everything in one easy-to-use platform removes the frustration from a process they repeat constantly.


What’s next for Volburg

Volburg's next step is to evaluate deeper integration with its ERP system, Monitor, and see how to further improve joint operations with its customers who also use Cargoson as their TMS. Having proved the value of consolidating carrier quotes and tracking manually through Cargoson, Jevgēnijs is now considering how much of this he can automate within Volburg's existing systems.

Volburg used to spend around four hours a day comparing quotes tab by tab and calling around for tracking numbers. Now it is all in one window. Addresses fill in on their own, and anyone on the team can check a shipment's status without picking up the phone. After standing in for the logistics role for a week, Jevgēnijs put it simply:  "I say, it took me maybe ten minutes and it is all done."