GFS goes green with paperless billing

UK-based parcel and carrier manager Global Freight Solutions (GFS) is to make its client correspondence entirely ‘paperless’. From later this month, every client of GFS will receive electronic bills as standard.

The move follows the introduction of an online claims handling system last year which had transformed the more traditional, document-based method.

Managing director Neil Cotty said the new initiative was merely the company’s latest step in seeking to combine innovation with a desire to reduce its carbon footprint.

“We felt it was essential to match our state-of-the-art systems with our environmental consciences. Other businesses which offer paperless billing have made it optional, but we have decided to make it the norm.

“Instead of sending printed cover sheets with invoices often tens of pages long, as we used to do, we will now raise e-mails alerting customers to bills being available for viewing on a secure intranet. We will also issue electronic credit notes and operate a paper-free customer service function.”

The move means that GFS, which is based at Billingshurst in West Sussex, will drastically reduce its consumption of paper as well as greatly impacting on the amount of envelopes and printer ink it uses in liaising with clients.

It follows a six-figure investment and year-long research and development process which resulted in the creation of an entirely electronic system of administering claims for lost or damaged parcels which won the support of clients and Britain’s major parcel carriers.

Cotty said that the paper-free step was taken following consultation with clients to make sure that they supported the GFS plan.

“As with everything we do, it was important that we took our customers’ views into account and that whatever we did must be both of benefit to them and practical as well as reducing our carbon footprint. Otherwise, it might have seemed like vanity when, in fact, we have had an environmental agenda since we were founded a decade ago.”

Cotty added that GFS had taken other measures to underline that even though its corporate branding was red-and-white, its credentials were green.

The company has signed to the 10:10 campaign, a move to get businesses and individuals to reduce their carbon emissions by 10 per cent in the space of a year.

Beyond the environmental gain, Cotty said the ‘green’ strategy reinforced GFS’s business sense. He estimated that using less energy and stationery will save the company tens of thousands of pounds each year.