On a single platform that combines truck, rail, barge, and now ocean freight, shippers all in one place, providing visibility for the entire lifecycle of the ocean shipment.
“The ocean freight industry struggles with lost containers, congested ports, shipping container shortages, rising freight rates, lack of carrier capacity, and crew shortages,” said Bernard Cohen, senior product manager, IntelliTrans.
“Ocean shipments are slower than other modes yet offer significant sustainability benefits while also delivering a lower cost per unit. For these reasons and more, shippers are leveraging ocean freight as supply chains suffer from fluctuations in supply and demand, increasing operating costs and diminishing bottom line profits.”
Overwhelming challenges with ocean freight
“The IntelliTrans Global Supply Chain Visibility Platform (GVP) for ocean helps shippers and carriers meet the overwhelming challenges associated with ocean freight,” said Ken Sherman, president, IntelliTrans.
“While some vendors only provide a tracking platform, IntelliTranss that shippers’ challenges demand a more robust solution that actually helps them book and execute. That’s why IntelliTrans is proud to develop complete tracking. booking, and execution platform that becomes the integrated command centre for a shipper’s transportation logistics needs. Our GVP provides visibility for any mode – ocean, truck, barge, or rail.”
IntelliTrans GVP Ocean now gives extra visibility on container tracking, along with:
- Connections to over 100 ocean carriers, NVOCCs, and freight forwarders, eliminating the need for shippers to reach out to each carrier by email, phone, or carrier website. The Ocean platform covers 100 carriers, 425,000 port pairs, and 18M schedules so shippers have a wide range of carriers and schedules to cover their loads.
- Shippers submit booking requests and receive booking confirmations on the GVP portal electronically, making it faster, easier to track, and more automated.
- Orders can be shipped via a full container or less than a full container load. Tracking data and shipment execution are exchanged between carriers and shippers all in the same portal.
- Electronic bill of lading (BOL) and online shipment instructions comply with industry-standard data points. Shippers can view historical shipping instructions and compare them to current ones to generate insightful dashboards with KPIs.
- Booking and shipping instruction templates help shippers with pre-populated forms, making it quicker and easier to execute a shipment, and enabling staff to focus on more value-added tasks.
- Seamless in-transit shipment tracking for ocean vessels and inland moves, so shippers know where their shipments are at all times. Shipments can be viewed on maps, regardless of mode, so ocean, rail, and truck appear on the same map for a holistic view of transport operations. These may be used internally or securely shared with customers for a better experience by shippers’ customers.
- In addition to the Carrier ETA, the GVP Ocean platform also provides dynamic ETAs calculated using multiple data points. This gives shippers a more accurate estimated arrival time for improved operational planning.
- Industry-standard value codes, UN location codes, and HS codes for approximately 38,000 products avoid transmission failures to ocean carriers. The benefit of this would be when a user is entering a transaction into the system, the location and product fields have preestablished values which avoids bad data entry.
Ocean schedules enable planners to determine the best route option. The platform returns all possible options with available transit dates, estimated arrival times, voyage information, and terminal information so that planners can pick the best lane with confidence.
Tracking captures critical events
Container tracking captures future critical events when importing containers, allowing shippers to easily tender a truck and have the shipment picked up on time.
IntelliTrans Open Message Systems Interface (OMSI) support connects virtually any TMS, ERP, and third-party providers, enabling shippers to have visibility from a purchase order number and other essential reference numbers or information.
“Shippers have everything they need to ship and track ocean freight on one platform,” adds Cohen.