Global ocean freight company relies on Mazars

The ocean freight company is relying on Mazars’ Microsoft team for implementation of a custom solution across Microsoft Dynamics 365 CE (Customer Engagement) and Microsoft Dynamics 365 FO (Finance and Operations). MID-SHIP locates and manages cargo for barges, railcars and trucks; supervises on and off loading; finds appropriate warehousing; manages inventory; and schedules material delivery to end receivers worldwide.

MID-SHIP, headquartered in Port Washington, N.Y., required a tailored solution that many standard out- of-the-box ERP and TMS solutions don’t completely cover (e.g., demurrage scenarios, when a ship is detained by the freighter beyond the time allowed for loading, unloading or sailing).

Our custom solution relies on D365CE to handle MID-SHIP’s complex voyage management operations (voyages, multiyear contracts, commission tracking, billing, cargo, bill of lading (BOL)) and D365FO to handle financials (purchase orders, invoices, payments to shipowners/brokers as well as sales orders, invoices, payments from customers). DualWrite is used for the integration between CE and FO.

MID-SHIP is realizing the following benefits from our solution:

• Improved tracking of client correspondence
• Identifying new opportunities with ship owners and charterers
• Capability to quickly adapt business operations with a flexible and scalable solution

MID-SHIP’s contracts with its clients can cover one or many voyages that have multiple ports. Outlook email attachments can be used to associate email communication with a voyage/contract as soon as  a contract is final/signed and a voyage gets created and scheduled. In some scenarios, multi-voyage contracts include voyages that are scheduled months in advance.

Information about voyages are tracked in CRM including ship owners, charterers, clients, laytime information, shipment schedules, freight rates/ charges, bills of lading and cargo information. As soon as the cargo is finalized, it’s sent to D365FO as a sales order (SO) for customers as receivables, and as purchase order (PO) invoices for brokers and shipowners as payables.

Tracking this wealth of information enables MID- SHIP to identify competitive opportunities with ship owners and charterers. Using automation, our solution identifies and creates opportunities when planned chartered voyages don’t have a ship owner assigned to them. This allows brokers and sales managers to see, in real time, opportunities before other competing brokerage firms do – giving them a competitive advantage and enabling better service to ship owners and charterers.

Another benefit: Brokers and sales managers can track and monitor outcomes of these competitive opportunities, driving accountability and sales key performance indicators.

With our solution, MID-SHIP’s standard finance procedures (invoicing and payments) can now be executed in FO. If needed, cash and bank reconciliation can now also be handled in FO.

With Dynamics as a primary platform, MID-SHIP can take advantage of custom CE for operations and also of a strong ERP finance backbone while having easy access to reporting tools such as PowerBI.

Our custom solution for MID-SHIP, which is a member of the Association of Ship Brokers and Agents, relies on the following Microsoft products:

• Custom D365CE solution for operations
• DualWrite as integration middleware
• D365FO for financials
• PowerBI for reporting

To learn more about Mazars’ custom Microsoft solutions, please contact us. 

Authors

Michael Rofman, Partner
Christian Segurado, Manager
Bradley Monnet, Manager