DocUnlock for Customs Brokers

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Dear customs broker,

Most of the costs of running your business are probably related to entry-writing. Sometimes that means just over half of your total expenses… and sometimes up to 90%. 😮

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That’s because if you want to grow the business, you need more entry writers. Plus, if you want to keep clients happy long-term, then you need great entry writers, and those are hard to find.

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That means recruiting, interviewing, hiring, and onboarding them. It also means training them on your clients & their unique needs, and all of this requires a big investment of time & energy. It can be worth it in the end when you get to work with a great entry writing team! However, all these challenges tend to put a speed limit on how quickly and confidently you can close new customers, increase revenue, and ultimately grow your business.

Worse yet, even when you do find great entry writers, they typically end up having to do tons of manual and inefficient work. Their domain expertise and tribal knowledge are vital to your business, yet they probably spend the vast majority of their time doing repetitive mundane tasks like downloading attachments from emails and transcribing information into other systems as they prepare your filings.

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These manual things should be automated and handled by software. Just as a pasta machine can free a great chef from manually cutting each piece and allow them to serve delicious meals to more happy customers every day - computers should allow you to capture information from documents with superhuman accuracy, at unlimited volumes, and without effort, so entry writers can shift their valuable time and attention toward something that actually leverages their knowledge like auditing and being great account executives toward your clients.

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If this were possible, it would be like giving entry writers super powers. You could double your business without having to hire twice as many “chefs”! Equally exciting is how this could reshape the whole industry, by driving efficiency up (making businesses healthier) and driving the cost of global trade down (rendering goods more affordable and making regular people happier).

That’s typically the benefit we expect when technology breakthroughs improve the old way we used to do something - we expect it will make our lives better, and easier.

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So, why is it so hard to get computers to do a good job at this? No good automation has been widely accepted yet because it’s really hard to be a great entry writer, and the technology & techniques didn’t exist to automate the intricate entry writing process with high enough quality.

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A great entry writer is somebody who accurately transcribes data from commercial invoices, packing lists, or bills of lading; somebody who is detail-oriented when following client instructions; somebody who is fast enough when preparing entries to keep up with your clients’ dynamic needs and who can allow your business to support higher volumes.

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This is a domain that has traditionally been very hard for computers to do well. The technology to do a great job at solving these challenges simply didn’t exist 24 months ago.

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But it does now. 🙂

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Introducing DocUnlock! We build unique, lovingly crafted, AI-powered tools to give customs brokers and entry writers superpowers that were previously impossible.

We automate getting all the data out of your documents and into your internal systems (like NetCHB) as ready-to-file entries, for your team to easily review and submit. We flag any missing or incorrect data for your entry writers, so they can rapidly triage and fix issues on behalf of your clients. We are faster and more accurate than the best human entry-writers (by far), we handle PGAs and nuanced client SOPs, and we can support unlimited volume. All of this allows you to shift focus back where it belongs: growing your business.

We (the founders Ned and Sepehr 👋) are alumni from Flexport and Algolia. Ned ran the entry writing team of 400+ people at Flexport, one of the world’s largest freight forwarders & customs brokers, and was personally responsible for more entry writing than just about anybody on planet Earth. Meanwhile, Sepehr ran the global solutions engineering teams across 3 continents for Algolia, a technology company that handles over 2 trillion yearly search queries worldwide, where he built software used for the automatic processing and ingestion of vast quantities of the world’s business data.

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We understand and care deeply about the challenges of entry writing and large scale data automation - and we’re here to help you.

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Today, we are increasing the efficiency and productivity of our customers’ businesses by orders of magnitude, and reducing their costs to grow. We make entry writers over 10x more productive, allowing brokers to both scale up the volume of filings they can prepare and to generate more revenue faster. The best part is, getting started with us is as easy as simply forwarding us your emails with documents attached, then watching as full entries magically appear in your ABI system.

Our mission is to make the supply chain industry as efficient as it can be by reducing wasted time & energy, and driving down the cost of global trade & the prices of goods. We think this will improve the world and improve everybody’s lives.

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That would make us very happy. Plus, we just really like documents. 🤷

If it sounds like we can help your business, we’d love to chat. Don’t hesitate to reach out to us: hello@docunlock.com

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