essDOCS Wins Competitive Tender from BHP Billiton

essDOCS, the leading enabler of paperless trade, today announced it won a tender to develop and deliver a document preparation (Doc Prep) solution for major mining & trading conglomerate BHP Billiton’s Marketing business.

The project fits within BHP Billiton Marketing’s global Touchless Order Fulfilment initiative, which aims to take all processes, from goods ordering to delivery, paperless.

After implanting a single instance of SAP, BHP Billiton Marketing determined it needed a standardised Doc Prep solution to cover various trades – ranging from iron ore, coal and copper to uranium – across 21 of its offices in 14 countries. 

CargoDocs will interface with BHP Billiton’s 1SAP, plus a number of legacy solutions, to pull all document data into the Doc Prep platform where documents can be collaboratively drafted with BHP Billiton’s trading partners before being signed and issued. 

The solution will also provide a portal for BHP Billiton’s customers to receive and download paper documents, and feature seamless connectivity with essDOCS’ proprietary electronic Bill of Lading solution – enabling fully paperless eDoc and data exchange with customers.

Documents created in the soluton for BHP Billiton Marketing include: various Bill of Lading options, Cargo Manifest, Packing List, Commercial Invoice, Shipping Instructions, Exporter Declaration, Document Presentation Form, various certificates such as Certificate of Analysis, Certificate of Weight, Beneficiary Certificate and more. Documents can be outputted as original paper or electronic documents. 

The Doc Prep solution will be delivered in two major phases in 2015.

Alex Goulandris, CEO, essDOCS, said: “We are delighted to expand our working relationship with BHP Billiton and in assisting our customer in realizing their paperless vision. At the end of this project, CargoDocs Doc Prep will offer a globally-used, state-of-the-art document preparation tool for international trade.”

In being awarded the Doc Prep contract by BHP Billiton, essDOCS beat out competition from two specialist Doc Prep vendors, one of the world’s leading ERP providers, and a major digital media and software vendor.