Evgeny will demonstrate how to minimize the mileage driven on container terminals, by planning the berthing of incoming vessels optimally according to the location of containers located on the yard, and blocks assigned for discharge containers by using mathematical algorithms.

Get some insight on this topic, and sign-up to the transportevents.com event in June in Ho Chi Minh City, by clicking here.

During Beacon's IntraAsia Summit, Translog Asia 2008, in Singapore on 8-10 April, Rene will speak on the subject of using technology to price transport offerings automatically, leveraging some of the principles, which low-cost-airlines successfully have introduced to the air industry to increased their yield.

Sign-up for the event and hear the piece here.

Definition

A shipping line using foreign agents for interacting with individual customers. The line receive copies of bookings/ export manifest by EDI from export agents, and submit EDI message with import manifest to discharge agents. Leave it to individual foreign agents to invoice and collect payments, and receive monthly re-imbursements from foreign agents reflecting freight deducted with agents commission.

Line Benefits

Using e-Business to provide up-to-date sailing schedules available for direct customer and agent self-service, issue tariff rate freight quotes and take bookings will provide the following specific benefits to the shipping line on top of the generic benefits mentioned in introductory article:

• up-to-date sailing schedules reflecting operational adjustments available to all agents and customers instantly
• shipping line direct management of products and corridors offered, rates and corporate surcharges, and distributed local agents management of local fees
• dynamic space re-allocation amongst agents in accordance with actual bookings, securing higher utilization and higher yield
• close monitoring of actual customer activities within agents area
• principal direct management of release of acceptance of alternative products/ cargo (40 instead of 2x20, dry instead of reefer) triggered by (lack of) actual bookings of primary/ preferred cargo
• re-structuring of agents agreement reflecting that major chunk of agents work now done as self-service online transaction (customer schedule enquiry, tariff rate freight quotes, bookings)

Picture: some top-tier shipping lines with own agencies already provide direct -or indirect, via portals- e-business support for the export shipping process with the exception of freight quote issuing, which is not common practice to support with e-business. principals with foreign agents use e-business less frequently.

Issues & Challenges

Some of the issues that shipping line principals will face when offering e-Business:

Optional or mandatory for agents to use: The line can dictate that all bookings must be entered directly by customer in corporate e-Business website. Alternatively, if some agents are allowed to do freight quotes and take bookings via phone, fax, email or direct customer visits, the agent need to enter the booking in the e-Business platform on behalf of their customer, as the logging of all bookings in the e-Business platform is a must in order for the e-Business platform to manage utilization and allocation. 

Agent back-office integration: The information flow is reversed. If the foreign agent is using an in-house financial system for keeping track of revenue to be invoiced and collected, and automatically providing book keeping input, the foreign agent need to receive the financial part of booking data from the e-Business platform. This can be done by electronic messaging (EDI/ebXML) either every time a booking is made, or as a batch transfer after the bookings for a departure is closed.

Principal Integration: The principal may any time transfer booking data from the e-Business platform to an in-house system. This can be done by electronic messaging (EDI/ebXML) either every time a booking is made, or as a batch transfer after the bookings for a departure is closed. Alternatively the shipping line can use the e-Business platform as the sole commercial system, allowing sharing of data with relevant load/ discharge agents.

Agent allocation versus first-come-first-serve: An e-Business platform keeping online bookings for all load ports give the principal the choice to continue with load port based (agent) allocations, or to accept bookings basis first-come-first-serve. The latter will secure a higher utilization. Maintaining load port based allocation secure stability for the agents, and the e-Business platform may still support the liner principal in adjusting agent allocations more dynamically.

Principals, who would like to learn more, please check out arl-shipping.com/eb.  In upcoming shipZine articles we will elaborate on how IT-driven market pricing can be used to increase utilization and yield. Principals, who can't wait for this, can read more on arl-shipping.com/ey/.

Assign resources to each vessel planned for your terminal or port, and resources per shift planned for gangs, and get an overview of all resources demanded for per time slot over the next days or weeks, which automatically is recalculated as ETA/ETDs are adjusted.

Each terminal or port operator define the resources and resource types themselves, either using generic descriptions or specific descriptions f.ex. for specific quay cranes, car ramps.

The daily or weekly resource summary across all terminal or port is distributed to internal departments for detailed planning and management, or to external sub-contractors or partners.

Key functionalities

• Assign shore-side resources to vessel
• Assign sea-side resources to vessel
• Assign resources to pre-set gang shifts
• List-style and visualization overview of all shore- and sea-side resources assigned to vessel aligned with vessel berthing window
• Consolidated overview of each resource type assigned on a time line
• Vessel profile based auto-assignment of resources
• Self definition of resource types, resources and characteristics
• Distribution of resource summary to relevant internal and external stakeholders
• Auto-adjustment of planned resources as a consequence of ETA/ETD adjustments

Product website | Flier | More

Definition

An independent shipping line agent representing one or several principals, using own in-house IT system for invoicing, receiving payment, keeping track of outstanding freight payments, and possibly also using one or several principal IT systems for submitting manifest data and for import cargo.

The independent agent use e-Business to provide self-service sailing schedules, issue freight quotes and take bookings. 

Independent Liner Agent Benefits

The e-business platform will provide the following specific benefits to an independent liner agent on top of the generic benefits mentioned in introductory article:

• offer modern e-Business facilities to customers irrespectively of whether the principal is ready for e-business or not;
• branding of own agency organization towards customers;
• save time for front office staff for trial tasks like informing latest sailing schedules eta/etd's and transit times, giving rate sheet freight quotes, taking bookings, keeping track of allocation per departure;
• staff may focus on value-adding services, rather than simple 'transaction work';
• offer a consistently looking transport service provided by agency across multiple principals;
• co-offer principal services and local value-add transport offerings to market.

Picture: it is not common practice that independent agents, or even global agency organizations, offer self-branded e-business solutions support export shipping processes, despite that a large part of the benefits provided by e-business are harvested in the front office.

Issues and Challenges

Some of the issues that liner agents will face when offering e-Business:

Allocation & cross bookings. The liner agent has a firm allocation from principal for export cargo and can use an e-Business platform to manage this allocation (to keep track of when a departure is fully booked). Some of the bookings may be received from other agents doing cross bookings - such bookings might be received by e-mail or via other channels, and in order for the e-Business platform to keep track of the number of free slots still available, the liner agent need to key-in the booking himself in the e-Business platform, or ask their agents colleagues to use the e-Business platform directly. Cross bookings done by liner agent's local customers for other export areas need to be handled outside the e-Business platform.

Agent back-office integration. If the liner agent is using an in-house financial system for keeping track of revenue to be invoiced and collected, and automatically providing book keeping input, the liner agent need to transfer the financial part of booking data from the e-Business platform to the financial package. This can be done by electronic messaging (EDI/ebXML) either every time a booking is made, or as a batch transfer after the bookings for a departure is closed.

Principal back-office integration. The principal may insist on booking data to be updated in their in-house system either instantly when the booking is received in order to be able to adjust the agency allocation up or down when booking closure is coming up, or as a load list batch update after booking closure. This can be done by electronic messaging (EDI/ebXML) either every time a booking is made, or as a batch transfer after the bookings for a departure is closed (manifest/ loading list).

Freight quote, bookings with freight agreement. If a rate agreement exists with a customer, the e-Business engine's freight quote capability offering tariff rates will not add value, and instead the e-Business engine is used to take bookings on concrete sailings for such customers. The e-business engine simplifies the freight quote process and support that many self-service freight quotes are issued for customers without rate agreements.

Space guarantee. If part of a customer agreement entails space guarantee, the customer must pre-book on the required departures well in advance, or the agent must keep part of the allocation reserved for space guaranteed customers and only release the last allocation if case of space guaranteed customers' downfall.

Independent liner agents, who would like to learn more, please check out arl-shipping.com/eb

We will in this edition start exploring how transport providers of different nature can offer e-business services to their customers. e-Business offerings in the transport industry is often related to a self-service track & trace allowing customers to check the status and last registered events on the cargo already being shipped.

However, e-Business is much more than that: e-Business is self-service website support for the process of selecting an appropriate product (=a transport service), agreeing on the price for the transport service (=receiving and accepting a freight quote) and placing a concrete order for the product (=booking). This will be the topic of this article.

In later shipZine editions we will revert to the fulfillment process looking at track & trace, exception management and import processes, as well as the aspect of market driven pricing as seen in the low-cost-airline market, and it's influence on e-Business offerings in the cargo transportation industry.

In this edition we will focus on export e-Business by looking at some specific deployment scenarios, digging into the benefits, and the issues and concerns to be addressed, by a specific type of transport company, while deploying an e-Business solution.

Benefits by Export Process e-Business

The benefits experienced are amongst others:

• commercial services available 24 hours a day to customers;
• no phone/ email/ fax waiting time for customers;
• online overview of actual bookings at any time;
• automatic logging of schedule requests and freight quote request; follow-up possible for booking solicitation;
• customer self-service experienced as positive for customer at the same time as front-office staff save time.