CASE STUDY
Ewals Cargo Care Powers Seamless Logistics with WSO2
Industry
Transportation
Highlights
Unifies disparate platforms into a single source of truth
connecting finance, planning, document management, and legacy systems to eliminate data silos and manual errors across its European operations.
Millions of business-critical messages processed every month
with standardized integration patterns that keep information flowing reliably across systems, protocols, and data formats.
Enables step-by-step modernization without disruption
decoupling applications through a central integration layer so ECC can replace systems, like its ongoing ERP transformation, while limiting the impact on day-to-day operations.
Overview
Ewals Cargo Care (ECC), founded in 1906, is a leading European logistics provider specializing in multimodal transport, moving freight by road, rail, and sea in combination to make deliveries more efficient and sustainable. The company operates its own fleet of specially designed trailers and offers supply chain management services that help businesses track and coordinate their shipments from start to finish.
Ewals Cargo Care combines a strong local presence with a large and reliable asset base and an increasingly multimodal transport network. With operations across 14 countries with 34 offices, the company operates a fleet of over 2,450 trucks and 5,500 trailers. Most of its activities are multimodal, underlining the strategic focus on combining different modes of transport. This extensive network is supported by strong industry expertise across key sectors, including automotive, chemicals, industrial, and paper and packaging.
Operating a logistics network of this scale and complexity requires an equally robust and interconnected digital landscape, capable of supporting information flows across countries, transport modes, customers, partners, and business functions.
With a complex logistics operation and a diverse application landscape, integration is critical to our business. WSO2 provides us with a central integration layer that allows our systems to exchange information reliably, while giving us the flexibility to modernize our IT landscape step by step."
Maarten Daniels
Manager ICT Solutions
Ewals Cargo Care
Challenge
Ewals Cargo Care relies on a diverse landscape of specialized platforms, including Globis software as its ERP platform, gradually replacing the legacy AS400 solution, custom-built planning software developed by Sopra Steria, HubSpot for CRM and SRM, Dotiga as digital archive, Lobster for EDI communication, NetSuite for finance, and Liferay for its customer portal. In addition, various applications and supporting tools are developed in-house to address specific operational and business needs. Together, these systems support the company's complex, multimodal logistics operations across Europe.
Without a central integration layer connecting these systems, ECC faced significant data silos that hampered end-to-end visibility across its supply chain, a common challenge for logistics providers managing complex, multi-platform environments at scale.
Compounding this fragmentation, each system communicated using a different mix of protocols and data formats, from SOAP web services and RPC to REST APIs, JSON, XML, and local file systems. This made it difficult to establish a unified way to manage data flows, and orchestrating critical information such as consignment details, trip legs, and driver updates between disparate platforms required complex point-to-point integrations and application-specific logic, making integrations harder to maintain, monitor, and evolve as the application landscape changed.
Adding to the complexity, ECC's business model demanded strict message sequencing to maintain data integrity across its supply chain, where certain updates could only be processed once a prior, related update had been received and recorded, much like ensuring a shipment's departure is confirmed before its arrival can be logged. Managing these dependencies manually, without a centralized orchestration layer, left the business exposed to inefficiencies and increased the risk of processing errors and inconsistencies.
Solution
To address these operational silos, Ewals Cargo Care implemented WSO2 Integrator as the central backbone connecting its fragmented digital landscape. The platform now bridges legacy management tools and modern applications alike, enabling all systems to exchange information seamlessly regardless of the underlying technology, protocol, or data format.
By centralizing integration and orchestration, ECC has established a more standardized and scalable approach to managing information flows across its application landscape. WSO2 improves the consistency and availability of data across systems and provides a stronger foundation for end-to-end operational visibility. At the same time, the integration layer helps decouple applications, enabling ECC to evolve its technology landscape while minimizing the impact on day-to-day operations.
Results
By unifying its integration strategy with WSO2, Ewals Cargo Care achieved significant improvements in efficiency, reliability, and decision-making across its European operations:
- Centralized integration: WSO2 provides a central integration layer connecting ECC's diverse application landscape and supporting information exchange across ERP, planning, finance, document management, customer-facing and other business applications.
- Reliable information flows, powering millions of messages every month: Standardized integration patterns help ECC manage information flows across systems, protocols, and data formats in a consistent, controlled way. Every month, millions of business-critical messages move through the platform without disruption.
- Supporting continuous modernization: By decoupling applications through a central integration layer, ECC can modernize or replace individual systems, such as its ongoing ERP transformation, while limiting the impact on surrounding applications and integrations.
- Proactive problem-solving: Automatic error-monitoring flags and resolves data issues in real time, ensuring critical updates like driver data and shipment status are delivered reliably and on time, rather than surfacing only after a disruption occurs.
- A scalable foundation for future growth: The integration architecture provides ECC with a foundation that can evolve alongside its multimodal operations and changing technology landscape.
Through its partnership with WSO2, Ewals Cargo Care has established a centralized, scalable integration layer connecting its diverse application landscape. This foundation supports reliable information exchange across its European operations, enabling smarter and data-driven decisions. ECC now has the flexibility to keep modernizing its technology as its multimodal logistics network grows, positioning it as an industry leader in sustainable supply chain solutions.
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