Issue 03 | 2025

IN THIS ISSUE

Message from the CCO 

Update: Program ECCHO 

BENJI Update: Pricing Solution  

Spotlight: Document Automation – CIV + PKL 

Digital Transformation: Digitalization Index 

JAS Voices: Feedback from the people 

Message from the CCO

Dear Colleagues:

Shipment and inventory visibility, proactive intervention when something goes wrong, and continuous improvement even if a failure might have occurred are what our customers need to make their customers happy to increase their sales and minimize their costs. Our success happens when our customers succeed, and it is inevitable for JAS to uplift our current standards to the industry competitive level while embracing automation and a certain degree of flexibility to serve specific needs. That’s the objective of Project ECHO, and I am happy to share that this multi-departmental project is well on track. From the point of sales to customer onboarding, operational execution, and continuous improvement, Project ECHO will help us to have a global standard (aiming for 70% of our business to fall under), which means repeated learning at operations and consistent quality outcomes at any JAS location while premium and customized service levels can make JAS to be a flexible service provider.

All freight forwarders, industrial project logistics companies, or warehouse operators use pretty much the same carriers, warehouse spaces, technologies, and equipment. Our value differentiation will come from better shipment and inventory visibility and execution, truly proactive intervention when something goes wrong, and continuous improvement culture. That value differentiation builds the trust in our brand and that emotional connection creates true customer loyalty.

Enjoy reading the rest of the DigiJAS newsletter! We are indeed in an exciting time.

David Bang 

CCO

Update: Program ECHO

Program ECHO is a strategic initiative that seeks to design, standardize and implement new JAS Global milestones to increase operational efficiency and ensure compliance. The program integrates a suit of projects such as RODEO, SONIC, COMANDO! and MISURA, aiming to improve data quality, optimize processes and enhance the customer experience through tools such as JAS SmartHub.

Key Objectives

• Align JAS Standards with Market Expectations

Elevate standards to meet and exceed client demands.

• Enhance Customer-Facing Digital Capabilities

Implement solutions such as standard reporting packs, delay management and reporting, and customer transit time reporting.

• Optimize Service Performance and Quality through Automation

Leverage automation to improve milestone tracking and reporting, vendor performance management, and provide digital desk reference tools for operators.

  • ECHO Standards (IT):

The IT component is fundamental to managing and implementing tasks across SmartHub, C1 and other integrated systems. Project milestones will be developed in three priority phases:

• Priority 1: Milestones with minimal dependencies, currently in progress.
• Priority 2: Milestones with moderate dependencies, which will be addressed next.
• Priority 3: Milestones with complex interdependencies, addressed in the last phase.

Workflow clean-ups are currently underway to support the integration of Priority 1 milestones, with testing being planned to begin in select smaller countries, pending final confirmations. Additionally, the redesign of milestone layouts in SmartHub is ongoing, with further updates to milestone icons and continued testing.

  • Program ECHO – and its Projects:

RODEO: Enhance how we report Transit Time and Delays with Delay Reason Codes.

COMANDO!: Transform how we make information available to our teams with our “Forwarding Instructions Portal”

SONIC: Reporting and Analytics on Steroids, powered by SmartHub!

MISURA: Measuring our Vendors on their Automation and Reporting linked to it.

Learn more about the other projects in this program:

BENJI Update: Pricing Solution

Project BENJI Scope
Implement automated, real-time dynamic pricing for quoting and booking, serving both internal and external customers. The project covers Spot, Contract and Traffic Quotes for Air and Ocean products, with advanced rate generation capabilities for RFQs.

Project BENJI continues to reach new milestones, most notably the launch of Phase Two – Contract Quote and Book for our four pilot customers. We are working to expand this innovative solution, onboarding even more customers and raising the bar for efficiency in the quoting and booking process.

In the meantime, JAS SmartHub has introduced significant improvements to online bookings, enhancing the user experience and increasing productivity by reducing manual data entry.

Next steps: JAS Insider

The Steering Committee decided to move forward with the design of the Internal Quote and Book functionality, with the goal of providing the sales team with a unified platform: JAS Insider. This tool will consolidate all quoting data into a single system, streamlining the process in a standardized and intuitive format for customers. JAS Insider is scheduled to launch in Q1 2025.

Project Milestones

Phase One:

Quote and Book Pilot – Launched.

Phase Two:

Contract Quote and Book – Launched.

Phase Three:

Internal Quote and Book - Q1 2025

Future Phases:

Spot Quote and Book – Q1 2025 (TBC)

Traffic Quote and Book – TBC

RFP Simulation – TBC

Rates Prediction - TBC

Stay tuned for more updates and communications on this important project!

Spotlight: Document Automation – CIV + PKL

In freight forwarding, one of the most time-consuming activities and manual processes is to capture data from our customers’ documents and convert it into our platform to be used in our current processes and documents.

To help our operators to be more productive and to focus on other activities that drive more value in our process, we have developed the Document Automation solution for Commercial Invoices and Packing Lists (CIV + PKL)!

Our tool uses edge Optical Character Recognition (OCR) solutions to read the documents received from our customers in several formats. Our flow will then identify the CIV and PKL from the documents received and use their data for further analysis of Artificial Intelligence (AI). A prompt is used to identify in the document main data points and an Electronic Connection update these to our CargoWiseOne (C1) system.

Overall process flow:

• Send E-mail

• Include Shipment # or Hbl #

• Subject or E-mail Body

Magic Happens

• Identify CIV & PKL
• Data
• Incoterm
• Goods Value & Currency
• References
• Updates C1 Fields

TEAMS

• Confirmation

• Failure - Manual Process

  • Next steps in this automation:

• NDA and Multiple Currency Handling.
• Create Shipments from CIV + PKL.
• Compare Current C1 Data to Found Data in the solution.
• Solution for BJOBs.
• More fields, like Weight, Dimensions, Number of Pieces, Descriptions, etc.
• Ideas or other improvements? Write to our DXT team - ww-dxt-team@jas.com

  • Main benefits:

• Automation.
• Productivity.
• Data Quality.

Check the section JAS Voices for feedback from who is already using the solution and make sure you are not missing out on it!

Solutions and views for Overall Performance (Index), Arrival Notice (ARN), Master Bill (MBL), Proof of Delivery or Pickup (POD & PIC) and Shipments and Consol (ADD).

Digital Transformation: Digitalization Index

In the previous issue, we presented our Digital Transformation initiatives, and details can be found on our Intranet page Home .

To better understand our solutions, learn about its benefits and make the best use of it, we are glad to launch our Power BI Digitalization Index page that will help our users and management to measure and understand where we are using and where we can further improve the usage of our solutions.

All details can be found in our Power BI Report itself – under the I button!

Open Power BI

Filter the Date the transaction was performed.

Filter out the Region and Country. Improvement to come to filter Companies and Branches added as per feedback on this release.

What Digital transformation solution was used for this process – or a Manual update by the user.

By hovering over the fields, the option of Drill Through will be available for users to check details of the data points.

Any further questions or suggestion on the process please get in touch with our DXT team for feedback – ww-dxt-team@jas.com

JAS Voices: Feedback from the people

The automated CIV + PKL upload has been such a huge help since it was implemented. Before this, whenever I would receive an invoice from a customer, I would have to either mark it down to come back to it later or stop what I was doing to go upload it and input the information.  Now with the automated system, all it takes is a quick email and I know it will be in the file ready for me to get to work as soon as I get to it. I am looking forward to the future of automation here at JAS.

Austin Dickard

Ocean Export Specialist - JAS | Charleston Branch

After start using the CIV + PKL automation solution, our job starting to get faster and more efficient. 

As the automation can help us to automate routine and repetitive tasks, improving efficiency and reducing human errors such as wrongly key in the wrong cargo value, etc. 

Secondly, it can help us to improve accuracy and productivity. For instant, the automation helps us to frees up the time from the repetitive tasks and to focus on the more challenging and strategic tasks. 

I am glad that our JAS development team can implement CIV + PKL automation solution which not only help us to keep our data quality but also help us to improve and enhance our daily job.   

Clarence Lim

Ocean Export Specialist - JAS | Klang Branch - Malaysia

I’m excited to talk about the new “CIV + PKL” feature at JAS. 

This functionality allows me to send an email to jas-civpkl@jas.com with the C1 Shipment ID as subject, and attached documents (invoices, packing lists). The AI automatically recognizes the invoices and packing lists, and adds the files to my C1 Shipment ID, along with information such as the incoterm, total merchandise value, and references. 

I absolutely love this feature, which I have already used 54 times. It works almost flawlessly and helps me immensely. Whenever I receive an email from a client with the documents, I simply forward it to CIVPKL, and that’s it! No more opening 10 invoices to calculate totals or manually uploading documents to my C1 Shipment. Everything is done in just two clicks, it’s magical! 

I am eager to see what comes next and am optimistic that the Digital Transformation team will continue to improve our daily work and reduce potential errors with the help of AI. 

Victor Sancho Tekki

Air Export Specialist - JAS | Paris Branch