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the allocation on the ship and the sailing schedule defined . And you don ’ t really know until the ship leaves with your shipment on it .”
The promise of technology in the booking space is connecting all those steps in a more seamless way , speeding the time from when a forwarder makes a booking request ,
“ You don ’ t really know until the ship leaves with your shipment on it .”
receives the confirmation from the shipping line , passes the confirmation to the shipper and marries it to a contract or spot rate . Those processes generally take time and , in many cases , are strangely disassociated from one another , even when the booking request comes electronically .
There is also the reality that the connections with shipping lines that are needed to facilitate bookings are not simple things to manage .
“ The carriers have launched their own [ booking APIs ], but there is still demand for a multi-carrier interface ,” said Jaakko Elovaara , CEO of integration specialist Youredi . “ There is no desire from the carriers ’ customers to add tens of integrations and then maintain them over time .”
The idea that bookings could improve processes before and after comes as a subtle shift is taking place in the industry , with INTTRA , long the most common portal for forwarders to make ocean freight bookings , losing market share over the past five years .
That has left the door open for other software vendors to make bookings the fulcrum for wider digitization for forwarders and shippers .
email : eric . johnson @ spglobal . com
To that end , DCSA is pushing carriers to think of standards adoptions in clusters , not as single processes . Tony Wringe , chief operating officer at DCSA , said one reason adoption of the association ’ s booking standard has lagged other standards is that different carriers have different digital priorities . He also said electronic bookings are only fully leveraged when other processes are also digitized .
“ The digital booking is not much use unless you ’ ve digitized the eBL and transport docs .”
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“ We know there ’ s been a drop with activity in INTTRA ,” said a source who asked not to be identified . “ Carriers pay INTTRA for bookings and shipping instructions . We know from some of them the spend on bookings has gone down significantly over time .”
Accelerating confirmations
One area of focus for the DCSA is improving the speed with which carriers respond to booking requests . Even in an electronic environment , carriers may not respond to a request made one morning until the following day .
Logistics technology provider Freightos has surveyed the industry for years and found that , in general , it still takes hours — if not days — for booking requests made to forwarders and carriers to be confirmed or rejected .
And electronic bookings generally don ’ t account for tasks such as ensuring that space and equipment for an accepted booking exist . Those parts of the process are still largely manual .
“ Where we ’ re at now is all the members have accelerated but it ’ s not a uniform acceleration ,” Wringe said . “ Different carriers are at different stages and they ’ re working with different technology vendors .
“ The majority of adoption is in eBLs , and the digital booking is not much use unless you ’ ve digitized the eBL and transport docs , so you can do it end to end digitally ,” he added . “ A couple of carriers have pushed ahead on booking , but they haven ’ t reached same level as on eBL .”
email : eric . johnson @ spglobal . com www . joc . com July 29 , 2024 | Journal of Commerce 13