Automation of the document validation process

The Twinings factory in Swarzędz sends over 300 shipments every month, with more than 200 of them being transported by sea. For each of these shipments, a bill of lading (BL) is required. Issued by the freight forwarder or maritime carrier, this document confirms the conclusion of a transport contract and is necessary for the client to collect the container at the destination port.

The information in the bill of lading must match the invoice; otherwise, there is a risk of the goods being withheld at the port or the import customs clearance being refused on the client’s part. This important document is issued by a third party, beyond Twinings’ control. Therefore, ensuring the consistency between the invoice and the bill of lading (BL), as well as meeting the deadlines for delivering the verified bill of lading is so crucial.

Developed in collaboration with All for One Poland, the bot checks whether all necessary information from the invoice(s) is present in the bill of lading and verifies its accuracy. In case of any discrepancies, it sends a notification to the relevant department within the company. Additionally, the bot monitors the deadlines for the delivery of the draft, revised version, and final version by the logistics partner and sends follow-up messages.

This is the third process – after invoice issuance and the preparation of additional documents – that has been automated over the past dozen or so months at the Polish subsidiary of Twinings.

The automation of the process involved designing the bot’s operation on two work paths: the checking path and the final (communication) path.

In the checking path, 11 data points in the invoice and bill of lading (BL) document are validated. These include the name and address of the supplier, as well as the name and address of the recipient, shipment-identifying data such as the invoice number, container number, seal number, weight, and volume of goods, as well as packaging types categorized by the so-called HS code (international coding of products in trade).

The data layout in the bill of lading varies depending on the freight forwarder. Additionally, in most cases, the bill of lading is issued in reference to several invoices (up to 5), while at Twinings, nearly all invoices are issued in reference to a single transport unit (container). Additionally, the partners used different naming conventions for the documents.

Previously, the process of checking the consistency of these documents was performed manually by customer service team members and resembled a “spot the difference" game – “find 10 differences between the pictures.” This task added little value to customer interactions, however it was necessary to ensure the consistency of the documents that the customer ultimately received. It was a very tedious, time-consuming, and frustrating task, and carried a high risk of errors.

When the bill of lading referred to a single invoice, the validation took about 5 minutes, but if it referred to multiple invoices, the verification process could extend up to 20 minutes for a single BL document. Currently, the bot requires between 1 minute (for the case of 1 BL – 1 invoice) to a maximum of 4 minutes (for the case of 1 BL – multiple invoices).

The second automation path involves time synchronization with the individual stages of the process, ensuring that the final version of the BL document is available before the expected arrival date of the goods at the destination port (Expected Time of Arrival, ETA).

Knowing the invoice issue date and the start of transport, as well as the expected arrival date of the ship with the container at the destination port, it is possible to plan process checkpoints, namely whether the BL document has been delivered and whether it is correct, and if not, to ensure that the business partner makes the necessary correction. In this part of the process, time is the key factor, so efficient and effective communication with carriers and maritime freight forwarders is crucial for closing the entire document validation process.

Also at this stage of the process, we have noted a reduction in the time it takes to receive a final BL that matches the invoice by almost half – from an average of 20 days before the process automation was implemented to 12 days now.

For each BL document, the bot is run once a day on a virtual machine. First, the dedicated email inbox is checked. Based on the document titles, the bot identifies whether the email contains a draft, a revised version, or the final document, and then initiates either the checking or final path accordingly. In the last step, a follow-up is prepared (depending on the status of the document: waiting for a draft, revised version or final version).

The appropriate path for the bot is determined by analyzing the email subjects with the reference name and status (draft, revision, final).

If the document is final, the process is relatively simple. The email attachment is downloaded to a temporary folder in SharePoint, where its name is changed according to the adopted standard. Additionally, the bot verifies whether a paper version (to be sent by mail) is required. Finally, there is the cleaning stage, which is the preparation for processing the next document.

The checking path is more complex. In addition to downloading the draft or revised version, the bot also downloads an invoice (as the basis for verification). Next, it identifies a template (handling multiple BL templates from different logistics partners), extracts data from the invoice, and checks whether the BL data matches the data for each invoice in reference to the specific BL.

If a discrepancy is found (it’s worth remembering that several templates are supported, and most are completed by a human and not automatically generated), the relevant information is sent to the team for rechecking by a human but only those places where a discrepancy was identified. Once the discrepancy is confirmed, the specialist can forward the message from the bot to the issuer of the bill of lading. A status annotation is added to the SharePoint list, and the temporary folder is finally cleared.

There are various statuses for documents defined in the checking path that can be set by team members, such as full check, partial check, final version, or excluded (specific cases where the document is excluded from bot operations and subject to manual review only).

The bot also monitors deadlines for BL documents (ETD status, departure). If it detects that the shipment has been dispatched but the draft BL has not yet been provided by the freight forwarder, it sends a follow-up to the freight forwarder. Similarly, if the revised version is not provided on time, the bot sends a reminder.

Each day, the team receives a summary report detailing the number of processed documents, their titles, and the actions taken (e.g., how many emails followed the final path, how many went through the checking path, who received follow-ups, detected errors such as missing attachments or incorrect attachment formats).

The bot also handles errors related to incorrect information entered in SharePoint (identifying human mistakes).

The algorithm is configured to check only unread emails; once processed, the emails are archived and removed from the inbox. Email subject lines and the naming conventions for final documents have been standardized. The introduction of automation has also become the basis for holding partners accountable for higher-quality documents and timely delivery. The bot is also more effective at catching errors.

The automation was done using Automation Anywhere tools. The starting point for the bot is a dedicated email inbox, and its working environment is a SharePoint platform and virtual machine. Python scripts were used to communicate with SharePoint.

The project of automating this process took three months to complete, including onboarding logistics partners into a new collaboration model (standardizing email subject lines, sending to a dedicated inbox). On Twinings’ side, two team members from the customer relations department and one from the IT department were involved.

Ewa Zandecka, International Customer Supply Manager, R. Twining and Company sp. z o.o. summes up: “The document verification process, which used to take us about five full workdays per month, now involves one person for 15 minutes a day. Digital assistants free people from tedious, thankless tasks that do not add value in themselves but deliver valuable outcomes. Yet, they have not made human labor obsolete. Employee involvement remains essential, though in a transformed capacity. Freed from tedious tasks, an employee oversees the process, becoming more effective, engaged, and creative. Since we started introducing process automation, employee satisfaction with their work has doubled, as we observe in our annual employee satisfaction survey, which maintains a continuous upward trend.

We are not laying off employees, on the contrary. We equip them with new skills and competencies, offering the opportunity to work in a different, more modern environment. We show them that everyone can have a real and positive impact on changing workplace culture. We foster a sense of empowerment, design development paths together, and promote employees. By freeing up time and potential, we could assign some employees to the project team responsible for implementing a new operating system in the company.

The automation of invoice generation, preparation of supplementary documents, and validation of bills of lading is just the beginning. Our success is inspiring other teams within the organization to look closer at their processes in terms of automation. Leveraging our experience and working with a proven partner like All for One Poland, we are already active in sales and distribution and more broadly in the entire supply chain.