About Sea Air Logistics
Sea-Air Logistics (SAL) ® are supply-chain professionals and providers of air and ocean freight forwarding and logistic services. The well-established business has been running for over 26 years and hosts its main office in Hong Kong SAR (which is a Free Port) alongside 300,000 sq ft of logistics warehousing space together with its 7 wholly-owned class A offices in The People’s Republic of China .
One of the USPs of the business is that it holds inventory for clients, so it’s not just a normal forwarder. Their clients don’t need to have warehouse space as they can utilise SAL’s ® and have it sent out from SAL’s ® HK site to their local and worldwide customers.
The business has a turnover of $100m and employs 228 people across its Hong Kong and China based offices.
Activity with Forward Solutions
SAL ® started working with Forward Solutions in early 1996, just after it launched its business. Forward Solutions provide a freight forwarding solution service for SAL® offering front and back office solutions.
SAL ® comments:
“When we started working with Forward Solutions the service they were offering was unique. One of the main selling points was that they enabled us to interface between the forwarding and the back office accounting software – 25 years ago it was unique and that’s why we’ve stayed with them for so long as they have continued to innovate their products and have given us a competitive edge in the market.
“One example of their innovation is the introduction of EDI (electronic data) to interchange shipments and invoicing to clients using EDI and transferring the documents. It’s technically quite difficult to do as you need to convert one format to another – depending on how the client has given it to you – and that’s where Forward Solutions has excelled as they have created a process utilising electronic software that works between the clients and the agents.
“Now we can send client invoices and packing lists in relation to customer shipments using EDI (electronic data) to overseas Free Trade Zones and complete the Customs Clearance process with little or no human involvement – this is quite recent and innovative and having this service available improves efficiencies within our business and those of our clients.
“Other things that Forward Solutions have come up with have also been really useful. For example, we now put all of our data into the cloud and that has worked so well as it has enabled us to change our working practices in how we do our backups. As well as enabling remote home working.
“Forward Solutions are also excellent at listening to any innovative ideas we may suggest – they listen and respond quickly and also work to our timings, as we are based in Hong Kong. They are big enough to have the resources to find the solutions but not so big that they can’t keep in contact, and that enables them to give us a personal service.
“We also have regular calls in place to discuss what our business needs in terms of changes, developments etc. With Forward Solutions you are getting a good service at a competitive price. Working with them has been extremely helpful to grow our business.”
