With a growing number of (semi-)governmental institutions in its customer base, Schotpoort Connect found itself needing to look for a reliable solution for sending e-invoices. The logistics service provider quickly settled on 4CEE. IT Manager Marcel Blom explains: “As soon as an existing or new customer wants to receive invoices via e-invoicing, you want to be assisted quickly and effectively. 4CEE understands that.”
Schotpoort Connect, based in Eerbeek, Gelderland, offers customized solutions for specialized logistics challenges. Whether it involves rush deliveries, products with non-standard dimensions, or secure, temperature-controlled, and medical transport: the logistics service provider—which also has branches in Nieuwegein, Vijfhuizen, and Wijchen—can handle it all. They can also take the hassle out of storage and transshipment for their customers.
Schotpoort Connect, together with SBPost and Connect For You, is part of the Schotpoort Transport Group, which has been in business for over a century.
Every day, more than seventy permanent drivers and tens to hundreds of couriers from the flexible workforce hit the road for Schotpoort Connect’s customers. Planning and coordinating all these trips—plus everything involved—is quite a challenge, as IT manager Marcel Blom explains.
Automation offers a solution and plays a major role in the company. “IT is very important to us, and we’re willing to invest in it. We want to stand out in our industry. Many transportation companies think you only make money on the road. They see IT only as a cost center. Yet it actually yields significant benefits behind the scenes. Because by automating processes, you can use the time saved for tasks that require more attention. We strive to get more work done with the same number of people by automating and digitizing in the right way.”
“By automating processes, you can use the time saved
for tasks that require more attention.”
Schotpoort Connect regularly submits bids for contracts and works for various quasi-governmental and government agencies. For the past few years, it has been mandatory for government agencies and other contracting authorities to use e-invoicing. This, of course, also has implications for contractors such as Schotpoort.
For a long time, the Eerbeek-based logistics service provider had only one government client that wanted to receive e-invoices. Schotpoort Connect found a solution that allowed them to send PDF invoices to that client via the secure Peppol network.
That worked perfectly—until one of Schotpoort’s existing clients had to put a contract out to bid again and introduced new requirements regarding e-invoicing. “They wanted to receive e-invoices in XML format via Peppol. But with our existing software, we couldn’t send XML invoices. Since we really wanted to bid on the contract, we had to look for another solution for sending e-invoices.”
Marcel and his colleagues soon came across 4CEE. One of the account managers at Easy Systems is a familiar face at Schotpoort, which immediately helped build trust. “But,” Marcel emphasizes right away, “that wasn’t the only reason we chose 4CEE.”
He says: “As soon as an existing or new customer wants to receive invoices via e-invoicing, you want to be assisted quickly and effectively. 4CEE understands that. The lines of communication are short, and I appreciate that everyone speaks the same language. In addition, we consider security to be very important, for example, and 4CEE also places a high value on it.”
The bid was awarded, and so the partnership with 4CEE began. Marcel explains how outgoing invoicing works at Schotpoort now. Because the company uses a transportation management system, MendriX, the process is slightly different than at most companies. “MendriX is a highly advanced TMS that gives us complete insight into all our logistics processes and is therefore very important to our service delivery. We can also handle invoicing through this software package. But the functionality for this is limited; it’s a TMS, not an invoicing solution,” Marcel notes.
“We export the invoices from the TMS to our accounting software. The standard PDF invoices are then sent directly to the customer. That accounts for about 90% of our invoices. The other 10% are e-invoices. After we’ve exported them from the TMS, we manually upload the invoices to 4CEE’s FTP server. We don’t have to worry about them at all after that, because from that server they automatically end up in the e-invoicing platform with Peppol Access Point. That platform sends the e-invoices in the correct format via the Peppol network to the customer.”
“We can easily onboard new customers to the e-invoicing solution.”
Sending an e-invoice still requires one small manual step on Schotpoort’s end. Marcel: “That’s due to a limitation in the TMS. Unfortunately, it’s not yet possible to automate this step in MendriX, but I’m in talks with them about the possibilities. Anyway, in the end, it’s all done in a flash. We literally just have to drag the invoice file from one folder to another on our computer. It’s really no big deal.”
“This method works perfectly for us,” Marcel notes with satisfaction. “The 4CEE e-invoicing platform always works, and there are never any problems. Because the e-invoices are sent quickly and without errors, they’re paid quickly, too.”
He continues: “We can very easily onboard new customers to the e-invoicing solution. That’s great, because we’ve been working with a number of (semi-)government agencies for some time now that are currently still preparing for e-invoicing. As soon as they’re ready, we can jump right in and won’t need to make any major changes to ensure the e-invoices reach them correctly. In addition, e-invoicing will play an increasingly important role in the future. I expect this to be the case not only for contracting authorities but also throughout the broader business community. I wholeheartedly welcome this development. We’re ready for it!”