Logistics site and portal

The two halves of this had to be designed together. A quote form is only worth building if something is waiting to receive it, and a pipeline is only worth building if the enquiries arriving in it are the ones the sales team wants. So we mapped the customer’s route through the site and the operator’s route through the CRM as one drawing, then built outward from where they met.

The public site came first. Freight buyers compare on price and on whether they believe you will do what you said, so the pages lead with lanes, transit times, and the paperwork Meridian handles. The quote request is four fields, not fourteen — everything else is asked later, by a person, once there is a reason to.

Behind it, we rebuilt the pipeline around how Meridian actually sells: enquiry, qualified, quoted, booked, in transit, delivered, invoiced. Every stage has an owner and a definition, so nothing sits in one because it is unclear who moves it. Quote requests land as deals with the lane, the weight, and the source attached, and route to whoever covers that lane.

The automation is deliberately narrow. A quote goes out with the correct terms attached. A follow-up goes at day two and day five unless the customer has replied. A booking creates the job, notifies operations, and schedules the invoice. Anything requiring a judgement call is still made by a person — the system only removes the steps nobody was choosing to do anyway.

The portal came last and is the smallest piece of the build. Customers sign in and see their shipments, documents, and invoices, drawn from the same records operations works in. There is no second database to reconcile, which is the reason the portal is trustworthy enough to stop the phone ringing.