“Kambium were quick to respond to our needs and provided a solution that was easy for our customer to use and simple for us to update, while preventing the customer from changing the background information.”
Air Freight Calculator
IT Strategy and Execution to Improve Efficiency and Add Value
Cameron Air and Seafreight engaged Kambium to create a tool that provided accurate freight pricing information quickly for an important customer who made frequent requests.
The existing process required phone calls, emails and manual calculations to obtain the information.
They chose to work with Kambium because of their existing relationship with sister company Kinetics and because discussions about the situation with Kambium Consultant, Meg Still gave them confidence that Kambium had a good understanding of the problem and could provide an effective solution.
Background
Cameron Air & Seafreight Ltd was formed in 1986. The company has established a reputation as a leading New Zealand owned international forwarding company providing global transport and supply solutions to many of New Zealand’s leading companies. Cameron Air & Seafreight Ltd has achieved a strong and respected position in its home market through an emphasis on high service levels, backed by experienced and effective personnel.
Cameron has a key client who is regularly sending freight from Australia to New Zealand and they would contact Cameron regularly by phone or email in order to obtain freight pricing.
Cameron needed a way to make this manual, repetitious and time-consuming process easier and faster.
Solution
Kambium were engaged to create an Air Freight Calculator tool which Cameron could in-turn provide to their clients to enable them to obtain freight pricing instantly using the tool themselves.
The calculator was built in a short amount of time to Cameron’s requirements using Microsoft Excel.
Excel was chosen because not only could it provide the required solution, but the client already had the software and was familiar with it, so this kept the solution simple and the cost low.
While the buttons, input and results fields were given logical and recognisable names that are visible to the user, the more complex tables and formulas were created in the background and hidden on a locked spreadsheet which was invisible to the end user. The Cameron administrator can enter a password to unhide, view and access these tables and formulae in order to update or amend the data as information changes (e.g. exchange rates) without changing the look and feel of the tool for the end user.
The tool was tested, recorded and the users trained and provided with a video tutorial of the usage and maintenance functions of the tool for reference whenever needed which meant that the client didn’t have to contact Kambium to remind them how to it works while learning and adopting the new tool.
“Not only did Meg deliver the solution very quickly and show us how to use it, but she also provided a video that demonstrated the process to update the tool so that we could refer back to it when we needed.”
Result
Implementation and adoption of the Air Freight Calculator went smoothly.
Feedback from both Cameron Air & Seafreight and their client has been very positive. They have found the tool simple to use, effective and easy to update and maintain.
Both Cameron and their client have saved many hours of quoting time since adopting use of the Air Freight Calculator in 2019 and it is still in use today.