Guest Post by Ciprian Roibu, Co-founder Deliwell
Are you a carrier or a freight forwarding company? Let’s start there.
Before you read any further, please answer these 10 questions honestly. If even 3 or 4 of them make you uncomfortable, chances are your business already needs digitalisation – you just haven’t called it that yet.
- Do you know, right now, how many requests turn into confirmed orders? (Conversion Rate)
- Can you tell what gross profit you made yesterday, broken down by shipment, customer, and dispatcher?(GP/day, GP/shipment, GP/dispatcher)
- How long does it take to process one order, from receipt to invoicing? (Cycle Time)
- Do you know exactly which truck will be available in France two days from now to take a potential load?(Capacity Planning)
- Can your customers track their freight on their own, or do they still call you for updates? (Tracking)
- If your best employee resigned tomorrow, who could do their job and how long would it take to recover?(Operational Risk)
- Do you know which invoices are due next week and what needs to be invoiced today? (DSO / Cash Flow)
- Can you find the CMR or POD for a shipment from three months ago in under 10 seconds? (Compliance)
- Do you know which deliveries are on schedule and which ones are delayed? (OTD, On-Time Delivery)
- When subcontracting a shipment, do you verify who the actual carrier is, or do you rely on trust and a familiar name from a Facebook or WhatsApp group? (Security / Anti-Fraud)
If you recognized your company in these questions but still believe you’re too small to invest in digitalisation, keep reading.
My advice is simple: don’t start digitalising until you’ve mapped your processes. Otherwise, you’ll end up paying to digitise the chaos instead of eliminating it.
📌 Process mapping = looking at every person in your company and writing down what they actually do, not what you think they do.
It’s a lot like renovating a house. You don’t buy the paint on day one. First, you measure the rooms, choose the colors, decide on the materials, move the furniture, and protect the windows. The tiles, flooring, lighting, and furniture all have to fit both the house you have today and the home you want to create. During the renovation, there’s dust, noise, and disruption everywhere. That’s perfectly normal. It’s part of the process, not a sign that something went wrong.
Digitalisation works exactly the same way. Preparation comes first, temporary discomfort comes during implementation, and the real benefits only become visible at the end.
The Reality of Running a Fleet
You search for loads on freight exchanges, Facebook groups, email, and WhatsApp. You contact dozens of customers every day and maybe convert 10-15% of those opportunities. Out of 100 requests, you end up with around 15 confirmed shipments, all tracked in Excel.
Orders arrive through freight platforms, marketplaces, email, WhatsApp, Skype, Teams, or by phone.
You print, sign, stamp, and send documents back, often without reading all the contractual clauses, which differ from customer to customer. Then you enter the order into your TMS or, more often, into Excel for the second time. You send the trip details to the driver through WhatsApp. When the customer asks for an update, you call the driver or check the GPS platform before replying. Once the shipment is completed, you create the invoice and send the paperwork by post.
On top of that, you have tachograph regulations and drivers’ hours to manage – legal limits, not optional recommendations. Vehicle allocation is usually manual and based on the truck’s current GPS location, rather than where it will actually be in a few hours after considering driving time regulations and already assigned jobs. If multiple dispatchers work from separate Excel files, sooner or later the same truck gets assigned twice. Guaranteed.
Every activity relies on a different tool: invoicing software, Excel, the Romanian ANAF platform for UIT, WhatsApp for drivers, GPS tracking, fuel card portals, toll platforms, accounting software, and more. Since none of these systems communicate with each other, nobody really knows how much profit the company has generated until someone manually consolidates the data. Invoicing gets delayed, shipment documents arrive late, and customer payments are delayed as well.
The Real Cost
Processing a single shipment typically takes between 60 and 90 minutes.
Multiply that by dozens or hundreds of shipments every month and you’ll discover something surprising: you already have a full-time employee dedicated almost entirely to paperwork. The cost is real, even if it doesn’t appear as a separate line in your financial statements.
What Digitalisation Changes, When Done Properly
It generates profit, not cost. Digitalisation isn’t an IT expense. It’s a business tool that helps you recover time and money by reducing paperwork, minimizing manual data entry, eliminating costly mistakes, and bringing greater clarity to processes, procedures, and the way your business operates.
It creates transparency and clarity. You can see exactly what’s happening, exactly when it’s happening – who is generating profit, what’s delayed, what still needs to be invoiced – instead of piecing everything together from memory, phone calls, or spreadsheets.
It enables scalability. Your business can grow without increasing administrative headcount at the same pace. Processes continue to work efficiently as the number of shipments, customers, and drivers increases.
It strengthens professionalism. Customers can track shipments in real time, receive accurate documents on time, and clearly understand the terms of cooperation. That’s the difference between a company that feels improvised and one that inspires confidence through the way it operates.
Finally, Where Do You Start?
With your processes.
First, map how your business works today. Then eliminate unnecessary steps. Only after that should you choose the digital solutions that support your business objectives.
Ciprian Roibu is the founder of COM and co-founder of Deliwell, with 15 years of experience in logistics and transport, between commercial and operational roles.
For a long time, he sought validation through diplomas, awards and battles won with others. The turning point came 10 years ago, when he was fired from Gartner: he understood that he was not as good as he thought. From there, he began the fight against superficiality and external validations. He used to look for a shortcut to the result; now he looks for the process, because the result comes by itself.
Maybe that’s why Deliwell did not start from technical know-how, like classic software, but from the real need of the market and the importance of having a software in your language. And along the way, without wanting to, Ciprian became an expert in e-Transport.
He is direct and pragmatic, he chooses to work only with people he resonates with — and those around him say that he is a source of energy and enthusiasm. You can find him at all the logistics events, not to be seen, but to understand and learn new things.
Outside of work, he is in love with Asia and traveling, but one thing remains non-negotiable: time with his family. Family first.