Indian logistics firm Jeena & Company is planning to revamp its tech stack to adapt to the evolving business environment.
The Mumbai-based company has provided logistics and supply chain solutions in India for 122 years and in Australia since 2018.
It offers services in both exports and imports for air and sea freight across global destinations. It is also planning an expansion of operations to New Zealand and the USA by 2024.
As part of its digital transformation journey, the company has spread its focus on several measures including enterprise resource planning (ERP), to enable process automation without the need for manual intervention, functionalities ensuring paperless working scenarios and interfacing with government bodies and customer authorities through logistics APIs.
Jeena & Company group chief information officer for digital solutions, Meheriar Patel told iTnews Asia that the firm is now working on building a new tech architecture transforming from its legacy systems.
The tech teams had “carefully” evaluated the requirements to upgrade the technology stack following the transformation in various functionalities.
“We looked at complete digitalisation of logistic processes and also began to accept API integrations,” Patel said.
For instance, the firm works along with the unified logistics interface platform (ULIP) that benefits all logistics stakeholders through verification of drivers and vehicle details in a single click, tracking & tracing of consignment, route optimisation, container visibility, inventory management and so on.
Patel said the company has taken up an internal challenge to develop an in-house platform for forwarding and clearing. “We have started to revamp them on the OpenStack platform with front end, which is in the open-source web application Angular framework,” he said.
Oracle solution
Jeena has struggled with accounting standards, statutory reporting and also in consistency of data. It planned to implement a standard financial system where the data cannot be fudged at the back end.
It “successfully” migrated its core financial management system to cloud with Oracle NetSuite as part of its three-year strategic partnership. It piloted the solution for around two and a half months before going live.
The NetSuite ERP helps companies manage key business processes with a single, fully integrated cloud-based system.
It includes various functionalities like transparent audit trails, workflow management, in-built financial reporting, budget planning, fraud management controls and other accounts, payables forming the backbone of the financial system.
“We have this biggest migration after a lot of customisation. Oracle NetSuite today works for our complete freight forwarding tech environment,” he added.
Additionally, the solution has also supported Jeena’s vendor management, software development lifecycle and sandbox environment. Through Oracle, the company has interfaced with banking APIs for reconciliation.
Jeena said it has achieved real-time visibility and has reduced IT costs post implementation. As a single platform offering multiple services, the firm could easily customise and integrate with other systems.
For instance, the company was able to run one of its important payment systems dealing with foreign currency payments and recovery, that was least believed to work on the new cloud venture. It could also build real-time dashboards and an end-to-end audit trail in the system.
Speaking on the future plans, Patel said, Jeena is partnering with startups and global players to pursue digital transformation. “We are planning to explore more modules, but not immediately,” he said.
