Seeing through the sea of data

When it comes to ocean logistics, many shippers and freight forwarders are lost at sea. The whereabouts of cargo or its arrival at port is anyone’s guess. Visibility is sometimes about as effective as a pirate’s telescope. You’d have better luck asking an ocean-going seagull when a shipment will arrive at port than relying on the current status quo of ocean freight management.

Land-ahoy, there is a solution. Transporeon Ocean Visibility is making it possible to have a clear overview of the ETA, status updates and ocean transport events in one platform. Global logistics service provider Polytra NV (Fracht Group) has been using our ocean visibility tools for a long time. So their managing director, Amaury Luyckx, is definitely not a fish out of water when it comes to supply chain management. Polytra specializes in delivering custom-made solutions that focus on the client’s unique needs. In our webinar with Luyckx, we did a deep dive into the importance of better, more innovative ocean visibility to serve these aims by taking the supply chain by the helm.

Moving beyond track and trace

All clients are interested in the same thing: Where is my cargo, when will it arrive, what are the issues, and how can I solve them. Customers want data that improves the shipping process and offers a higher quality service to their clients. The need to adapt is crucial in constantly evolving market conditions. Naturally, data is the new gold. Naturally, it shouldn’t remain a sunken treasure.

The best thing you can do for your customer as a logistics service provider is surprise them with the data you’re able to give them. Help them manage exceptions and efficiently intervene when a shipment isn’t going according to plan. Give them a Mayday dashboard system that proactively alerts logistics personnel if/when there’s an issue. Offer them the right data at the right time so they can adapt and tackle the challenges they face effectively. Show them what’s on the horizon: provide data the client doesn’t know they need yet, for such things as CO2 calculations or storm warnings, and make it possible to continuously add new data to enrich the platform.  

Moving from information to intelligence

Information is what you get from track and trace. Intelligence is what you’re going to do with it. It comes down to a question of how you’re going to implement the data and how innovative you are. The ocean visibility capabilities of the Transporeon Control Tower allows customers to launch a unified user interface with a map view, list view and status updates, making it easy to manage ocean transportation. Enhanced integration options make it possible to have complete real-time visibility in the ocean setting that can be sent to shippers. It’s not enough to compete with pricing differences. The business conversation has become about reliability and partnerships: thinking with the customer rather than thinking for them.

Reaching shore in record time

It doesn’t matter if, as a company, you’re a big fish in a small pond, or a small fish in a big pond. What matters is having end-to-end visibility that enhances your transportation capabilities so you can get things to where you want them to go, on time. The best way to do that is with a modular platform that can be built upon to create a completely integrated transportation management process from start to finish. It’s time that ocean logistics found its sea legs, and that data isn’t floating around like flotsam and jetsam on the high seas.