Gefco Overseas- Gefco Overseas choses DDS Freight to raise its productivity while lowering its shipping follow-up.

Since June 2005, Gefco uses DDS Freight and has renamed the solution Isygo (Information Systems Gefco Overseas) so as to manage their transportation from its Overseas division. First used in France, then in Morocco and in Spain, this solution equips, from now until the end of the year, all its agencies in the world.


The Overseas branch does all the international shipping for the provider and serves more than 300 destinations daily, by air, sea, and land all at the same time (to North Africa). In 5 years the Overseas division has more than doubled its sales figures, and in order to continue the growth of its activity has decided to furnish all its sites with a common TMS to manage its international flow.

“We sought out the advice of 6 specialized publications and retained a list of 4 software editors,” explains Philippe Maupin, Overseas Operations Manager. “The software needed to answer a certain number of criteria: standard while staying close enough to our needs to guaranty a rapid start-up; cover the ensemble of our transportation flow; user friendly; and strong technical support group to guaranty a quick integration of TMS in our system. DDS Freight satisfied all our constraint and answered 80% of our needs.”

Testing of the software started on October 2004, the project began by an analysis of the flow and parameters of the software. Its actual use began in June 2005 at three pilot sites in France; Le Havre for transportation by sea, Lyon for air transportation and Strasbourg for all land activities. By the end of the year the French sites were equipped with Pro Train Data solutions.
The results were shared with Gefco and its clients.

This new organization benefits the suppliers and their clients. Clients benefit from a unique shipping process within the network respecting procedures and working standards, a billing guaranty conform to the expected as well as a follow-up of non-conformity.

“Concerning us,” continues Philippe Maupin, “we improve productivity from the moment we get the dossier, thanks a recording and the transfer function that makes export dossiers available to the import office. This tool also permits us to optimize our grouping in all our jobs. What’s more, we improve management of our purchases and sales and we streamline administrative tasks thank to pre-billing and automated controls. Finally, Isygo, or rather DDS Freight allows us to follow our shipments and assures the management of events to supply us with a simple and global analysis of results. In time we should be able to handle at least 10% more dossiers at a constant actual yield.”

Clients-Leroy Merlin, For Leroy Merlin DDS Shipper follows more than 8 000 containers
Improvements in productivity and ROI assured.

In order to improve and automate the management of its large import operation – south-east Asia/Europe – the group Leroy Merlin, French leader in the do it yourself and home improvement industries, with worldwide sales figure of 5.6 billion €, has called upon DDS Logistics and its software solution DDS Shipper. The project began in 2003 and was finished in 2004. In 2005 the entire import operation is managed by the new system.

Plagued by delays in billing and poor administration of its importation from south-east Asia, Leroy Merlin chose DDS Logistics to automate management.

“Our objective was to improve both traceability and importation, and to automate our procedures. Our old system needed too much new information input,” explains Nicolas Gachet, Logistics Organization Director for the group Leroy Merlin. “It didn’t offer enough visibility in terms of shipping follow-up.”