AI agency Rotterdam: automating the work nobody wants to retype

The kinds of companies you find in Rotterdam

For this kind of work Rotterdam has two faces. Around the port sits everything that moves goods; in the city itself sits a lot of professional services running on hours and case files. Roughly five groups:

• Logistics, transport and freight forwarding: carriers, forwarders, customs agents, warehousing. Many documents per shipment, many parties needing the same data.
• Wholesale and import: buying abroad, stock in a warehouse outside the city, customers ordering by unit or by pallet.
• Maritime supply: ship repair, parts, surveys, inspections. Work per vessel or per order, each with its own reporting.
• Construction and installation: contractors, installers and maintenance firms driving around the region. Job sheets, planning, variations.
• Professional services in the city: accountants, law firms, consultancies, financial service providers. Document flows and manual checking.

The work that sits undone here

The question is never whether AI can do something, but which piece of work comes back every week, is done by a person, and calls for no real judgement.

In logistics and forwarding that is the paperwork around a shipment. A booking arrives by email, someone retypes the data into the transport system, and from there it goes into the declaration, the confirmation and the invoice. Every retyping step is a chance to get it wrong, and a mistake in a shipment reference or a commodity code costs days.

In wholesale and import it is the order flow: orders by email, by portal and by phone, all keyed into the same package by hand. When a delivery date shifts, the customer only hears about it if someone remembers.

In maritime supply it is the reporting per order: the same findings in a job sheet, an email and a survey report. At installers it is the job sheet retyped at the office, after which invoicing runs a week behind. At professional services in the city it is the documents that have to be read, matched to a file and passed on.

Paperwork retyped between systems

This is where we start most often in Rotterdam, because the gain shows up straight away. The situation is nearly always the same: a system holding the shipment or the order, an accounting package, and a customer who delivers in their own format. In between sits a person closing the gap by hand.

What we do about it: automate the reading and recognition, capture the data once, and send it to every place that needs it. Not blindly — if an amount does not add up or the system does not know a code, it goes to a person with the reason attached. That is the difference between an automation that survives and one that gets switched off after three weeks.

Customs declarations and shipping documents are a separate case. Liability attaches to them, so we automate the preparation, not the decision. The declaration itself stays human work.

An AI company from outside the city: how visits work

Our office is at Torenlaan 5B in Bussum, and the founder works from an office in Eindhoven two days a week. Rotterdam sits at a distance from both: about an hour’s drive from Bussum, slightly longer from Eindhoven.

We will say it plainly: we have no office in Rotterdam and we are not going to pretend otherwise. What we do is come to you, and we plan around that:

• Travel time: about an hour from Bussum, plus extra time for an address behind a terminal gate. We do not drive in rush hour; a session starts at half past nine rather than eight.
• With an hour each way we often suggest a full day rather than a half-day (4 hours): €1,192 instead of €596, excluding VAT and travel costs. In a full day we see two or three processes end to end. A half-day works too, but then part of the day goes into the drive.
• Travel costs: €0.45 per kilometre from Bussum, roughly €90 for the round trip. We charge that once per visit, not per process. Parking is passed on at cost and itemised on the invoice.
• Office in the city and a warehouse outside it? We do both on the same day: travel costs once, and we see both ends of the same process.
• Building and progress meetings happen remotely, with a fixed video slot each week. We come back for go-live, the training, and any test the people on the shop floor need to attend.

International chains and English-speaking teams

Plenty of Rotterdam companies have foreign customers, suppliers or colleagues. That brings two problems we see here more often. The first is language inside the process flow: documents in English, German or Spanish while the accounting package is Dutch. An automation that ignores that falls over on the first document in another language.

The second is the toolbox: an international transport or order system next to a Dutch accounting package, with a person in between. Sessions and documentation come in English or in Dutch, whichever suits your team.

What it costs

Our rates for a company in Rotterdam are the same as for a company in Bussum. Only the travel costs differ.

• AI scan: free, online, five minutes. A score, concrete opportunities and a first indication of cost. No sales pitch.
• Core session on your shop floor: a half-day (4 hours) costs €596 excluding VAT and travel costs, a full day €1,192. Our advisory rate is €149 per hour.
• Building: €110 per hour for straightforward work, €165 per hour for complex development. Paid monthly in advance from a budget you set, so there is no open end.
• Travel costs: €0.45 per kilometre from Bussum, plus parking at cost.
• A subsidy partner checks as standard whether a scheme applies. We carry professional indemnity and public liability insurance.

Where it goes wrong

Five things keep coming back. None of them are about AI.

• No owner. Without someone who can make decisions, the project disappears behind the daily rush. By far the most common cause.
• Data that does not add up. The same customer twice, addresses in a free text field, three item numbers for one product. Cleaning up is dull manual work and often the bulk of the first few weeks.
• A supplier keeping the door shut: no open API, or only on a more expensive plan. We check that before we build.
• The exception that is the rule. In logistics almost every shipment is slightly different. Automate on the tidy cases and you keep a pile of exceptions still done by hand. We count those exceptions during the core session.
• The wrong first process. Invoicing or a declaration is tempting, but a mistake there is paid back in trust and sometimes in fines. Pick something where a mistake is visible and fixable.

How to start

Start with the free AI scan: five minutes online, no strings. It tells you whether talking to an AI consultant in Rotterdam is worth your time yet.

If the answer is yes, we plan the core session at your premises in Rotterdam. We follow one or two processes end to end, talk to the people doing the work, and count how often something is retyped. You then get a core report with priorities and a go or no-go per opportunity, with an estimate in hours. That report is yours, even if you never work with us again.

Frequently asked questions

What we do here

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Start with the free AI scan

Five minutes online, no sales pitch: you get a score, concrete opportunities and an indication of cost. Based in Rotterdam or the port area and would rather talk first? Book an intro call and we will work out whether a core session on your shop floor makes sense, and whether a half-day or a full day fits.