Scania is one of the leading companies in the transportation industry recognized for manufacturing high quality heavy trucks, buses, enginesand services. The company operates in about 100 countries and has more than 37,500 employees.
In 2008, due to the Modernized Customs Code, Scania had to face new legal demands, requiring them to handle their customs activities electronically from July 2009 onwards. Scania urgently needed a customs solution that fulfilled not only those new legal demands but also the company's global demands.
We need a global standardized customs solution!
In order to provide their customers with optimized products and services, Scania relies on a global standardized production system called SPS (Scania’s Production System). This means that all plants throughout the world, work the same way and follow the same quality guidelines. Obviously, a normal customs solution would not have been enough for the successful multinational company. Scania needed a global standardized customs solution!
Quality, time, costs and more – the key decision factors.
Sandra Björling, Customs Specialist at Scania’s headquarters in SÖDERTÄLJE, Sweden, explains: “We had three expectations: Quality - which refers to accuracy and has always been Scania’s priority. Time - this means a short implementation time due to the necessity of a solution. Costs - Scania is always trying to be cost-efficient but still maintain high quality standards.”
During the decision making process Scania compared various customs software providers: “We quickly discovered that MIC’s solutions covered the most countries, included all required customs procedures and offered the best functionality.” To verify the impression they got Scania talked to customers of MIC (well known global players). They came to a final decision rather shortly after, and chose MIC.
A perfect schoolbook example!
Scania had no time to waste and immediately started a pilot project to implement MIC CUST® Export as a hosted solution for Belgium.
“The project with MIC was the perfect school book example!” states Sandra Björling. “All the expectations we had after our first meeting and the decision making process held true. MIC provided focused project management; they were timely and very accurate. It is true, MIC is costly, but they are on time and on budget, which is something we appreciate very much.”
On June 15th the two companies had their first meeting. The ‘Go Live’ Date was set for October 19th. Thanks to focused management on both sides, the actual ‘Go Live’ took place one week earlier on October 12th.
“We had no complaints whatsoever. Everything went very smoothly and we are satisfied. Simply the fact that the ‘Go Live’ took place one week earlier, despite of one month vacation, speaks for itself.”
Scania’s benefits according to Sandra Björling:
- We comply with legal demands.
- We can reduce costs and we have positive cash flow effects: “This solution is more cost-efficient than outsourcing our customs operations to a broker.”
- We can standardize the global customs process.
- We benefit from lower customs risk.
- We are able to replace all of our old customs systems.
- We get accurate statistics based on a single customs database, which enables us to make solid forecasts for the future with higher quality, while consuming less time and energy