Cover Story
Heimbeck said he believes NVOs are ideally placed to continue to be the managers of the booking process and the data generated from it .
“ All the dialogue about online bookings , it ’ s all carrier online bookings , it ’ s not NVO online bookings ,” he said . “ You haven ’ t seen NVOs bragging for years about their online bookings .”
Trade Tech ’ s tool is , above all , meant to help NVOs level up so that they remain the linchpin in the booking process .
“ The goal of digitization is collaboration , so the data is keyed once ,” Heimbeck said . “ And our customers , who are the middleman , make it easier to have their customers make a booking .”
Looking downstream
Having the booking data in one place , accessible by the shipper , carrier and NVO , means not only that amendments to the booking are visible to all , but that various parties can also plan downstream activities .
“ The NVO can see it , make adjustments , and the shippers can see the same thing ,” Heimbeck said . “ The shipper can say , ‘ I want to add dates in , so my warehouse can prep ,’ and the NVO can book a truck that corresponds to that date .” The same holds true upstream of the booking , he said .
Rob Petti , CEO of software vendor Prompt , said logistics services providers still struggle with connecting bookings to actual space on a vessel and equipment for the shipment . Prompt works with a number of top 50 forwarders and has focused in recent months on improving the booking process .
“ There ’ s a difference between a booking confirmation from a carrier and the confirmation [ a forwarder ] would send to the customer ,” Petti said . “ The forwarder may not have the space allocated until it gets the confirmation from the carrier . A booking becomes a shipment when you have
Reaching ‘ critical mass ’
Changing booking environment for ocean freight key to DCSA traction
By Eric Johnson
There ’ s always a danger in reading too much into statistics based off a small sample size . But Thomas Bagge , CEO of the Digital Container Shipping Association ( DCSA ), is convinced that the first half of 2024 was a watershed period for the adoption of the technical standards for container lines that DCSA has developed over the past five years .
Bagge told the Journal of Commerce DCSA ’ s nine container line members , which account for 70 % of ocean freight volume globally , individually adopted double the number of standards in the first quarter of 2024 than they had previously adopted across the first five years of the group ’ s existence .
“ And there was another jump in the second quarter ,” he said . “ We saw more individual standards adopted in May alone than they did in the prior four years . It is really taking off . We ’ re getting to a place of critical mass .”
Still , the jump in adoption in 2024 is off a low base : Only four individual standards were used by DCSA members by the end of 2023 . But something clicked into place in 2024 , with more than 30 individual standards now in play across those members .
“ It is really taking off . We ’ re getting to a place of critical mass .”
The standards DCSA has developed cover a range of core ocean shipping processes , from enabling electronic bills of lading ( eBLs ) to just-in-time port calls to track and trace . The DCSA website lists all the standards adopted by carrier members , including which version has been implemented , and provides a link to each carrier ’ s integration or developer portal .
Slow adoption
Notably , however , none of the DCSA members have adopted the association ’ s ocean freight booking standard . In essence , that means a shipper or forwarder wanting to make a booking request with a carrier must either use the carrier ’ s e-commerce website or booking application programming interface ( API ), email the carrier , or go through a common booking platform such as INTTRA , Infor Nexus or CargoSmart .
That requires shippers or forwarders to create and maintain individual electronic data interchanges ( EDIs ) or APIs with every carrier they use . An emerging but far from ubiquitous path is to turn to systems integration specialists to create a layer across every carrier from which a shipper or forwarder could make bookings .
Bagge ’ s vision is that every DCSA carrier member adopts the common booking framework so that a shipper or forwarder could use the exact same process and integration to access any carrier they choose .
“ If carriers have a standard API and any shipper can do it directly , there is less of a need to turn to a third-party software provider ,” Bagge said . “ We ’ re in the business of making things easier .”
DCSA is due to release the 2.0 version of its booking standard this summer , and it comes as industry sources have told the Journal of Commerce that INT- TRA , long the default platform for making bookings across carriers , has lost market share .
12 Journal of Commerce | July 29 , 2024 www . joc . com