When you export premium red meat to more than 65 countries across the world, the quality of your operations needs to match the quality of your product. For Alliance Group, the 100% farmer-owned New Zealand food company producing some of the finest free-range, grass-fed lamb, beef, and venison on the planet, that commitment to excellence extends well beyond the farm gate.

As Alliance’s global footprint has grown, so has the complexity of the documentation required to support it. Different markets bring different compliance requirements, certificate formats, and regulatory standards. Managing that complexity across a high-volume export operation requires processes that are not just functional, but efficient, consistent, and scalable.

With that goal in mind, Alliance Group focused on technology to understand how to help their export documentation team work smarter, removing manual workflows, improving accuracy, and supporting the fast-moving nature of international trade.

The Opportunity: Moving from Manual to Digital

Like many exporters operating at scale, Alliance Group’s documentation process had evolved organically over time. It worked, but there were areas where manual steps were creating unnecessary effort for the team.

Generating certificates of origin was one example. The process was time-consuming, requiring administrative effort each time a new shipment needed to be prepared. Document approval and dispatch cycles, while manageable, were longer than they needed to be, which meant invoices sometimes reached overseas buyers later than ideal. The knock-on effect to that impacted payment timelines and cash flow.

Across the business, small inconsistencies in document formats and templates led to occasional internal queries that could have been avoided with standardisation. Collectively, these were the kinds of inefficiencies that, if resolved, would free the team to focus on higher-value work.

The Approach: An Integrated Suite Tailored to Alliance’s Needs

Alliance Group partnered with TradeWindow to implement an integrated suite of export documentation solutions, Prodoc, Origin, and Cube, each one addressing a specific part of the workflow.

Prodoc brought standardisation and speed to the export document generation process. Customised templates were built to reflect Alliance’s requirements, ensuring consistency across the team and reducing the back-and-forth that comes with manually prepared documents. Alliance’s team also began attending regular Prodoc workshops, which helped their team to get the most from the platform, and embed the new ways of working across the business.

Origin automated the certificate of origin process through EDI integration, removing the manual steps that had previously made each COO request a time-intensive task. With Origin in place, Alliance’s team could generate compliant certificates accurately and efficiently, at the pace their global operation demands.

Cube rounded out the solution by providing a secure, fast way to share completed documentation with overseas buyers and stakeholders. Rather than relying on fragmented email chains or manual dispatch processes, Alliance could now get documents into their customers’ hands quickly and with full confidence in the integrity of the information.

Together, these three solutions created a connected digital workflow. One that reflects the high standards the Alliance Group hold across every part of the business.

The Results: A Meaningful Shift in Efficiency

The impact across the team has been tangible:

• Document generation is now significantly faster. Producing a complete set of export documents, a task that previously took up to an hour, can now be completed in just 5 to 10 minutes using Prodoc. For a team processing shipments to 65+ markets, that 80% improvement in productivity adds up quickly.
• Turnaround times have been cut in half. Processing documents through Prodoc and sharing them via Cube has helped Alliance achieve a 50% reduction in average turnaround time. Documents reach customers sooner, which means invoices are submitted earlier and payment cycles move faster, giving Alliance better access to working capital and reducing the need for external financing.
• Internal queries have dropped by 25%. The introduction of standardised, customised templates has brought greater consistency to the team’s work, reducing the need for internal clarification and enabling a smoother handover process with customers.
• 15 hours saved each month on certificates of origin alone. Origin’s automated COO workflow has reclaimed roughly 15 hours of administrative effort per month that was previously consumed by the manual request process, time the team can now direct toward more meaningful work.

Danilo Bortolan, Export Documentation Manager at Alliance Group, noted on what the change has meant in practice:

“The implementation of Prodoc, Origin, and Cube has delivered significant benefits, including improved process visibility and traceability, streamlined export document generation, reduced manual labour, elimination of inefficient workflows, and a decrease in rework.”

Find Out What’s Possible for Your Business

TradeWindow’s Prodoc, Origin, and Cube solutions are built for exporters who are ready to move away from inefficient manual processes, to build an automated and integrated documentation workflow that scales with their business.

Read the full case study here: Alliance Group & TradeWindow – Prodoc, Origin, Cube Case Study

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