How Exellyn cut export shipping calculations from 20 minutes to seconds - and rolled it out company-wide

Growing faster than the back office can keep up

The global boom in AI infrastructure and data centres is driving exceptional growth across the IT hardware supply chain. For Exellyn, a global IT infrastructure specialist, that growth means more shipments, more customers, and more complexity - but the same 10-person export desk handling it all. Without changes to how the back office operates, scaling would mean scaling headcount in lockstep with order volume. That is expensive, slow, and increasingly hard to staff.

The most immediate bottleneck was the export quoting process. Before any quote could go out, someone had to answer a deceptively complex question: how do these products actually fit into boxes and onto pallets?

The process started with the PDF sales document. Each line item had to be cross-referenced against a merge center holding roughly 16,000 products - with dimensions, weights, and unit conventions varying across manufacturers. Managing that breadth of product data at scale is inherently complex. From there, the person had to manually work out the optimal packaging configuration: which items share a box, how many boxes fit on a pallet, what the total dimensions and weight come to.

Each person on the desk had built their own method over time. The team's expertise was real - but with no standardised calculation, results depended on who ran them and how much time they had.

The whole exercise took more than 20 minutes per shipment. And because the underlying product data was unreliable and the packing logic was unstructured, every quote had to account for uncertainty in dimensions and packing. The team knew the quotes could be tighter - but without reliable calculations, there was no safe way to get there.

From PDF to packing configuration in seconds

Lleverage deployed an AI-powered Volume Calculator designed to fit into Exellyn's existing process rather than replace it. A staff member uploads the PDF sales document, and the tool extracts the product data, matches each item against the merge center for dimensions and weights, searches externally for missing data where needed, computes the optimal packing configuration, and returns a complete result.

The whole process takes seconds.

Tijmen, a Forward Deployed Engineer at Lleverage, led the build alongside Sanne Voesten, Export Desk Manager, and Bram van Capelleveen, Export Manager. The design priority was mapping the calculator to how the desk already worked - same inputs, same document types, same language - rather than forcing a new process. The controlled rollout began on 5 December 2025, starting with the 10-person export desk and sales staff.

When the team validated the tool's accuracy

The real validation came from the team's most experienced member. Bram van Capelleveen had been doing these calculations for years and trusted his own spatial judgment. During a team demo in December, he reviewed one of the calculator's packing configurations and challenged it - the items would not fit in the proposed box. He went to check manually. The calculator had it right. The items fit.

"I looked at the packing configuration and thought, there's no way that fits. Then I went to check manually and it did fit."

- Bram van Capelleveen, Export Manager, Exellyn

When the most experienced person on the desk validates that the tool matches - and in some cases extends - what the team can do manually, the conversation shifts. The question moves from "can we trust this?" to "how do we get this into every quote?"

What made the difference was not a single test, but what it confirmed: a systematic calculation could consistently deliver what the team's best people were already doing - at a fraction of the time. That was the evidence Sanne needed to roll it out.

From optional to company-wide - in six weeks

Sanne watched the data accumulate over the following weeks. The conclusion was clear: the calculator consistently delivered faster, more accurate results. She gave every team member a seat on the platform and made it the standard for every new quote.

"It takes significantly more time and we see many more mistakes from sales staff not using the Lleverage Volume Calculation tool. So now we gave everyone a seat on the platform and made it mandatory - every new quote goes through it now."

- Sanne Voesten, Export Desk Manager, Exellyn

The adoption was reinforced by a process change. With the calculator handling dimension lookups, Sales no longer needed to manually search the merge center for product weights and sizes. Sanne simplified the quote request form: Sales now submits a PDF sales proposal and basic customer information, and the export desk runs it through the calculator. The tool became a natural part of the workflow rather than an extra step.

"It will cost more time NOT to use the tool than to use it."

- Sanne Voesten, Export Desk Manager, Exellyn

With the calculator producing exact packing configurations, quotes now reflect what the shipment actually requires. The result is tighter, more competitive pricing - built on precision instead of estimation. In February 2026, Exellyn approved a company-wide rollout, extending access beyond the core export desk.

Accuracy alone did not drive adoption. What made it stick was a combination of three things - visible proof that the tool matched the team's best work at a fraction of the time, a management decision backed by evidence, and a process change that made the tool a natural part of the workflow.

Looking ahead

The Volume Calculator is the foundation for a broader automation roadmap at Exellyn.

Carrier rate integration. The team currently looks up carrier rates after each calculation. Connecting rate charts directly to the calculator's output will produce an instant cost estimate alongside the shipping configuration - bringing two steps into one. This is scoped, in development, and next into production.

Export compliance checks. Exellyn's team already manages compliance across 193 countries. A new layer will surface country-level regulatory requirements - trade restrictions, required documents, import permits, duties, and recommended Incoterms - directly within the quoting workflow, building on the compliance expertise the team has developed.

ERP integration. Exellyn is planning an ERP migration later in 2026. The Volume Calculator, carrier rate integration, and compliance checks are all scoped as embedded steps in the new ERP workflow, triggered by a button click or email reply - built into the new system from day one.