🚢 Case Study: Streamlining Port Payments & Clearance
🧭 At a Glance
Faced with mounting delays and rising costs at the port, a regional logistics team partnered with SORTAgile for hands-on training and coaching support from Gwendo. Together, they transformed port payments from a rigid manual process into a faster, flexible workflow.
The Result?
The Result?
- ⏱ Payment processing cut 83%, from 6 hours → under 1 hour
- 📦 Clearance delays reduced from 50%, 2 days → 1 day
- 💰 Storage charges slashed by 70%
- 🛵 Rider delivery costs down by 80%
- 😀 Fewer customer complaints and stronger SLA performance
🚦Stage 1: BEFORE- Manual Bottlenecks
The team mapped the entire clearance workflow, uncovering waste in:
- 🖊 Required 5 approvers to sign cheques
- 🏍 Rider had to deliver cheques to the port daily
- 📅 Delays whenever signatories were unavailable
- 🕒 Payment confirmation could take over 24 hours
- 💸 Extra storage charges
- 📉 SLA breaches and customer complaints
- 💰 Strained cash flow
🚦Stage 2: DURING -Lean Redesign
After reviewing the current process, a Lean process redesign introduced three major changes:
- 🏦 Opened a bank account at the port for direct payments
- 📝 Introduced pre-signed weekly cheques (2 signatories instead of 5)
- 📅 Structured weekly reconciliation by the port supervisor
- 👥 Approvals simplified from 5 → 2 (60%)
- 🏍 Rider trips reduced to once per week
- 📤 Same-day clearance enabled
📈Stage 3: AFTER – Faster, Flexible Payments
- ⏱ Processing cut from 6 hours → under 1 hour
- 📦 Port clearance dropped from 2 days → 1
- 💰 Storage charges cut by up to 70%
- 🛵 Rider delivery costs down by 80%
- 😀 SLA performance improved, fewer customer complaints
The Journey in One Line
🖊️ Manual Bottlenecks→
🛠️ Lean Redesign →
💳 Faster, Flexible Payments
✨Fixing the Flow, One Approval at a Time
This case shows how Lean + Coaching support can transform bureaucratic workflows into agile, responsive systems—without compromising control.