Integration as a Growth Engine for Logistics and Supply Chain

A European logistics and supply chain provider specializing in data-heavy integration processes faced a core challenge. As the company was experiencing rapid e-commerce growth, the rule-based integration platform it had relied on was increasingly becoming a bottleneck for expansion, automation, and innovation.

The IT environment included 700+ interfaces connecting customers, partners, tracking providers, customs systems, and internal applications. These integrations supported business-critical processes such as customer orders, customs communications, and invoicing.

As business-to-consumer and cross-border volumes grew through several high-volume international e-commerce customers, the logistics service provider’s need for speed and scalability rose sharply. For example, during one of their peak periods, more than 22,000 individual e-commerce declarations had to be processed quickly. While this was happening, integrations were becoming more complex, so making changes and root-cause analysis became increasingly time-consuming. To complicate this further, when e-commerce declarations aren’t filed before a shipment arrives, the goods must be stored in a warehouse, delaying delivery and incurring additional costs for this organization’s e-commerce customers.

“Over the years, our integration platform had become a critical part of our day-to-day operations,” says the company’s CIO. “At the same time, it became clear that the existing architecture could no longer keep pace with how quickly our business was evolving.”

In day-to-day operations, even small changes to integration workflows required significant effort. Updates to existing processes often took several days, and building new interfaces could demand months of development time. On top of that, even minor system tweaks created a heavy reliance on external service providers.

The existing platform also hit its limits when it came to troubleshooting. There was no consistent end-to-end visibility across processes, so IT teams often had to do manual workarounds. To pinpoint issues, teams had to upload each file manually across multiple integration steps, compare results, and then review additional file outputs feeding downstream processes.

As a result, the company chose a fundamental reset of its integration architecture, with the goal of finding a strategic platform.

Key criteria included:

• Scalability to support growing e-commerce volume.
• Stability for 24/7 operations.
• Reduced reliance on external vendors.
• A future-ready architecture.

What ultimately made the logistics service provider choose InterSystems was

the benefit of having clearly measurable gains in performance, scalability, and cost efficiency.

The migration to InterSystems was carried out in phases and aligned with the original plan. The team first moved the most complex and business-critical integrations, including e-commerce interfaces and container-tracking processes, then focused on migrating additional integrations step-by-step.

Container tracking was up and running within the first month, followed by the implementation of e-commerce processes in the second month. This iterative approach helped reduce risk while delivering early operational benefits.

Since the switch to InterSystems, integration process performance has improved dramatically. Tasks that used to take several minutes, or even hours, now run in just a few seconds.

As part of the rollout, detailed API and system metrics were also collected to make day-to-day load and performance fully transparent. The most striking difference showed up in CPU utilization: the previous integration solution, at around 1 million requests per month under normal conditions, was already running at over 30% CPU usage—and for more complex processing, it even spiked above 90%. By contrast, InterSystems technology now stays below 10% CPU utilization, while also handling significantly more complex processing logic. Plus, InterSystems now processes daily request volumes at a scale that previously required significantly longer processing timeframes.

The measurements clearly demonstrate the new InterSystems platform’s substantially higher efficiency and scalability. Some examples include:

• Faster daily tracking reports: Reports that used to take about 15 minutes to generate are now created in 30 seconds or less.
• Improved platform stability: The number of incidents has dropped significantly, and with end-to-end tracking of integration processes via InterSystems Visual Trace, issues can now be identified and resolved much faster.

“We used to have to do a lot of manual reworks. Now we can pinpoint issues in minutes and fix them in seconds,” says the CIO.

Regarding day-to-day development, new interfaces can now be delivered much faster. Integrations that once took weeks or months are now typically completed in a few days to a few weeks.

Collaboration also became simpler from an organizational standpoint. Instead of lengthy coordination meetings, integrations are now typically handled by just two roles: a developer and a process owner.

Beyond the technical gains, the modernization delivered clear financial benefits as well. The company cut its integration costs by more than 50 percent. License savings alone enabled the investment to pay for itself in under six months.

Beyond integration, the new architecture also lays the groundwork for future innovation. With a consolidated data foundation and clearly mapped processes, automation and analytics solutions are easier to implement—specifically, data-driven control models or AI-enabled logistics applications.

“Integration is no longer a bottleneck for us—it’s an enabler,” the CIO says. “Our IT has evolved from a cost center into a true accelerator of operational performance.” Today, the platform supports several international customers, including organizations managing transatlantic goods flows from the United States.

This project is a clear example of how companies can move from an operational bottleneck to an integration platform that’s scalable, cost-effective, and built for the future. The key isn’t just better performance; it’s the ability to implement change faster and with far less effort.