Case study · Lamour · Inbound freight
How a mid-market fashion manufacturer rebuilt its inbound freight function around a digital coordinator that owns the container lifecycle, and cut manual coordination by more than half in a few months.
Watch this one before reading, if you only have five minutes. The Inbound Freight Director describes the work in her own words, which is worth more than anything we could write about it.
Lamour's logistics team was managing thousands of inbound container shipments a year across dozens of overseas suppliers, several freight forwarders and several ports of entry. The work itself was not complex. The volume of coordination, document chasing and reconciliation was consuming the whole week.
The team was not short on talent. It was short on capacity. Every hour spent chasing a supplier was an hour not spent on the work that needed judgment.
Before anything was built we ran a full diagnostic of the department: every handoff, every system, every document, every escalation path, mapped end to end. Only then did we draw the line between the work that did not require a person and the work that did.
It does not automate one step. It owns a responsibility, from the moment a cargo-ready window opens twenty-eight days out to the moment the container clears customs and reaches the warehouse.
A watch on the order system triggers ahead of each cargo-ready date. The coordinator asks the supplier for volume, cargo-ready date, weight, port of origin and destination, and follows up until the supplier responds.
With the supplier data in hand it assembles upcoming orders into proposed containers, grouped by cargo-ready date, supplier, desired warehouse date, port of origin and destination. The plan goes to the team for approval. People approve. The coordinator does the arithmetic.
Once a plan is approved it coordinates with the freight forwarders to book the shipments, then confirms the order back to each supplier with the shipping details locked in.
As the vessel date approaches it goes back for the bill of lading, the commercial invoice and the packing list, and follows up until every document is in hand, on time and in the right format.
It reads each document and checks them against each other. If the items billed do not match the items packed, it returns the documents to the supplier with a precise note on what to correct, then re-checks when the corrected files arrive.
Once the documents agree, it compares the shipment against the original order: quantities, item codes, prices and colours. Small quantity differences pass. Anything larger, or a mismatched attribute, goes to a person with the source documents attached and a one-click decision.
Every day it pulls each container's position from the tracking service and updates the order system with the latest location, projected arrival and customs clearance date, until the container reaches the warehouse.
The reconciliation logic is where a digital team member earns its place. Three checkpoints, three different decision rules, each one explicit, auditable and reviewable.
The invoice, the packing list and the bill of lading are cross-checked for internal consistency. If an item appears on one and not another, the supplier is asked to correct and resubmit. The coordinator handles that loop without involving the team.
Once the documents agree with each other, they are compared to what was actually ordered. Quantities and prices are matched line by line. Item codes and colours are matched exactly.
Small quantity differences with every attribute matching proceed automatically. Anything beyond that threshold goes to a human reviewer with full context. The point is not that it is always right. The point is that it knows the difference.
A read-only connection into the order system lets the team query it, run reconciliations and pull reports in plain language without leaving the chat window. Nothing in that system can be changed through that channel. Writes stay with the coordinator, where every change is governed by explicit rules and a full log. That was the level of access everyone was comfortable with, and it is the right default.
The coordinator reached production inside the department in a matter of months, and the results compounded as the team's time shifted from running the process to improving it.
“The Sterling North team was extremely supportive throughout the project. When hurdles came up, they worked closely with us to troubleshoot, refine the logic, and deliver quick turnarounds when needed. Their responsiveness and willingness to dig into complex operational details made the collaboration very effective.”Shuya Zhai, Inbound Freight Director, Lamour
Every build we deploy starts with a process map. If your operations team is buried in coordination work, that is where the conversation begins.