DSP - Direct Sourcing Partners
Shipment Operations Automation for Cross-Border Sourcing & Freight
DSP bridges Chinese factories and Argentine buyers, handling the full import lifecycle: in-person factory audits, pre-shipment quality control, load consolidation, and door-to-door forwarding, with offices in Buenos Aires, Miami, and China. It's a relationship business built on trust - but every shipment also carried a heavy tail of repetitive, bilingual coordination. We delivered one connected operations layer on top of the team's existing tools (WhatsApp, email, spreadsheets) that removed that repetitive work from each shipment: faster quotes, cleaner customs paperwork, proactive shipment updates, and client-ready QC reports. Every workflow keeps a person in the loop - the system drafts, a human approves.
Quick Facts
Industry
Logistics / Freight forwarding & sourcing (China-Argentina imports)
Scope
Operations layer + workflow automation (quoting, customs-prep, shipment tracking, QC reports)
Time to Build
Pilot in 2-4 weeks (phased)
Key Features & Technologies
Bilingual (Spanish/Chinese/English) quote-and-intake assistant on WhatsApp and web, document extraction and reconciliation across invoice, packing list, bill of lading, and certificate of origin, tariff-classification suggestions, proactive shipment-status notifications with exception escalation, and automated QC report generation, all with human approval and audit logs.
Results
Manual admin per shipment
60% less
Quote turnaround
Same-day (from 2-3 days)
Status questions auto-answered
~80%
Customs holds
Reduced - errors caught early
The Challenge
Four operational workflows ate the most time and created the most risk, all of them repetitive, document-heavy, and bilingual. Quoting was slow: requests arrived on WhatsApp and the web form with half the information missing, and hand-built freight quotes took two or three days, so the slowest quote often lost the deal. Shipping documents - commercial invoice, packing list, bill of lading, certificate of origin, across Spanish, English, and Chinese - were cross-checked by hand, and a mismatch caught late meant a costly hold at Argentine customs. 'Where's my container?' never stopped, with staff checking carrier portals and relaying updates all day. And QC reports were assembled by hand from inspectors' photos and notes, delaying the go/no-go call on each shipment.
Our Process
We built one connected operations layer on DSP's existing tools, with a person approving every client-facing output. A bilingual (Spanish/Chinese/English) quote-and-intake assistant meets each request on WhatsApp and the web form, asks the few questions a quote needs, and drafts a structured quote from DSP's own rate logic for a human to send. A document-and-customs workflow reads the invoice, packing list, bill of lading, and certificate of origin, reconciles quantities, descriptions, and values against the original order, suggests the tariff classification, and flags mismatches before the container sails. A proactive shipment-status agent notifies clients at each milestone in Spanish and escalates only real exceptions. A QC report generator turns an inspector's photos and checklist into a branded report against the buyer's spec. Factory audits, customs sign-off, and supplier relationships stay human.
Why It Matters
The point was never to replace DSP's people - it was to give them back the hours spent retyping documents and chasing container status, so they can spend that time on sourcing, audits, and the relationships that win the next client. In a trust-based business, taking the repetitive paperwork off the team is what keeps them focused on the parts that actually earn trust.
Why They Chose Us
We start with one workflow, prove the time saved on real shipments, and expand from there - no big-bang rebuild. The work sits on top of the tools the team already uses (WhatsApp, email, spreadsheets), with audit logs and human approval on every client-facing step.
"Our team stopped retyping documents and answering "where is it now?" all day, and got those hours back for sourcing and audits."
— Operations Lead
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