German Logistics Provider Speeds Billing

The target of Simon Hegele, a globally operating logistics specialist with 50 locations, was clear from the very beginning: The effort for service recording and invoicing for its customers from a wide range of industries was to be significantly reduced – from several days per month to just a few hours. With EPG | CnB, EPG’s contract and billing system, the contract logistics provider has found a digital and flexible solution that supports this goal achievement.

Since October 1, 2020, CnB has been running productively at two locations of the logistics service provider Simon Hegele Gesellschaft für Logistik und Service mbH: in Karlsruhe and Duisburg. “In the course of a conversion of the current version of our warehouse management system EPG | LFS to Release 8, we also wanted to optimize the billing of the logistics services we provide for our customers,” says Sven Söllner, Head of Competence Center WMS at Hegele. “We need more transparency to be able to track the individual billing steps – from goods receipt to picking to value-added services to goods issue. At the same time, it also allows us to provide much better evidence of billed services to our customers.” In addition, it is important for the logistics service provider to see at an early stage what sales are being generated. To this end, Hegele can now use CnB to draw up pro forma invoices on a daily basis, for example, and look at the development over a certain period of time.

Complex billing conditions: easy to manage with CnB

For a first customer, Hegele is using CnB to make it easier to trade the very high requirements for billing terms. This involves many individual details: for example, items are sometimes invoiced on a piece basis, sometimes on a carton basis, and there are items requiring serial numbers and mixed pallets. In each case, different pricing is necessary. “Even in such complex cases, CnB should help us to act efficiently and without errors in the future,” adds Sven Söllner.

One major benefit can already be seen: In the course of the short-term reduction in value-added tax from 19 to 16 percent, Hegele is benefiting from CnB because the system can be easily adapted for certain periods and with regard to certain key figures with just a few clicks: “This is a significant reduction in workload and would only have been possible with our old solution with an enormous amount of effort,” says Sven Söllner.

Currently, CnB is linked to the warehouse management system LFS. In the future, the contract and billing system will also be linked to SAP in order to create consistency between warehouse management and the commercial ERP system.