Many companies have invested in solid systems. Orders are created in the ERP, customer data lives in the e-commerce platform, and freight is booked in a separate tool. Yet despite this, many organisations experience that their freight flow requires far more manual work than it should. Information needs to be checked, supplemented, or moved between systems, and small interruptions become part of everyday operations.
The issue is rarely that the systems themselves are poor. It is that they are not designed to operate as a single, connected flow.
When the freight flow breaks between systems
In many businesses, friction appears at the handovers. An order is created in one system, freight is booked in another, and follow-up happens somewhere else. Each step works in isolation, but the overall flow relies on people filling in the gaps.
This may involve addresses that need to be manually checked, freight selections made outside the standard flow, or information that does not travel from order to delivery. When systems do not collaborate, work shifts from technology to people often without it being a conscious decision.
In practice, this means that a flow which should be continuous instead becomes fragmented. An order might be created in an ERP such as Fortnox, freight then booked manually in a separate tool, and the carrier, such as DHL receives information late or in multiple steps. Each handover becomes a potential source of error.
Why manual steps creep in
Manual steps rarely appear because anyone wants to work inefficiently. They emerge because systems do not share enough information with each other. In day-to-day operations, this often shows up as:
- order data needing to be checked or supplemented before freight booking
- freight choices being made outside the primary system support
- weight, dimensions, or address details being adjusted manually
- information not following through to tracking and follow-up
Small exceptions and special cases begin to be handled manually and gradually become a natural part of how work is done. As volumes increase or requirements change, this manual handling grows. What initially felt manageable becomes increasingly time-consuming and difficult to oversee.
When systems exist but do not communicate
Many companies feel they already have everything in place. ERP, e-commerce, warehouse systems, and freight tools are all there. Yet gaps still appear in the flow. The reason is often that each system is optimised for its own part of the process, not for the whole.
When information is inconsistent between systems, additional checks, corrections, and manual decisions are required. This is where the freight flow loses momentum, not because the systems are wrong, but because collaboration between them is missing.
What a connected freight flow feels like in practice
When systems genuinely start working together, everyday operations change noticeably. Order data follows the process all the way through to freight booking. Freight choices are made consistently based on the same information. Exceptions are caught earlier and require fewer manual interventions.
In a connected flow, for example, an order can be created in Fortnox, automatically passed to Shiplink for freight booking, and then executed by the selected carrier, such as DHL, without information needing to be moved or adjusted manually along the way.
At Shiplink, we often see that when data is allowed to flow through the entire process, the need for manual checks drops significantly. Work becomes calmer, more predictable, and less dependent on someone constantly holding the flow together by hand.
