Shenzhen conference: Online marketplace leader to use its big data to mitigate port congestion
 As market leader in the online ocean shipping marketplace market, INTTRA now searches for new ways to apply the data it collects. Thus far, it reckons it has nearly 25 per cent of online booking market share and is headed to gain a 40 per cent tranche in the next few years.
Or so Jim Whelan, president of INTTRA Asia, says. While the company enjoyed a good deal of initial popularity when it first arrived in Asia a decade ago, winning over major carriers, it wasn't till later when it caught on with shippers - as something akin to the Travelocity or Cheapflights of ocean shipping.
Not long ago, Mr Whelan stood before the TPM Shipping conference in Shenzhen not only to extol the virtues of his New Jersey-based firm, but to offer observations on the data it has collected from shippers and carriers over the years.
The key to the future, he told the 400 delegates before him at the Hotel Intercontinental was e-commerce and he wanted more thought applied to "how we think about e-commerce and what we can do in terms of it in a rising Asian and intra-Asia trade.
"You have speakers talk about rates, rates management, visibility and distribution. So apart from the business process perspective, the acquisition of rates and then the action of that rate, that’s where INTTRA operationally starts to play.
"So, from that rate you’re looking to actually put a container in one ship, so INTTRA provides, schedules, visibility into voyages, into schedules, from there we are likely to issue an initial booking, and ask for confirmation with the carrier, submit, documentation in the form of shipping instructions, and amend that, look for your BL, and meanwhile try to get some data around visibility in terms of where your container is going, " Mr Whelan explained.
Of course that has been going on a long time. What INTTRA plays with now - within those sets - is automating and digitising business processes.
"We have 36 million containers on our network. We do that by allowing 200,000 plus users who have shippings and bookings through 45,000 offices around the world, all connected through one interface, one process, one standard with over 50 carriers.
"We let all of those 50 carriers have access to those 45,000 offices and 200,000 users through one connection, one process and one standard. Where is INTTRA is forward to continue to drive two per cent market share year over year, we are looking to accelerate that and achieve 40 per cent market share in the next few years," he said.
And given the rise of the intra-Asia market, driven by a slower, but still overpoweringly strong Chinese growth, the company is confident about the future.
"So, on top of the, 36 million containers, we have an additional 10 per cent or 35 per cent of sets of container movement data. And our intent at INTTRA is to leverage that data to provide analytics to the industry so that shippers and carriers can look at, identify risks, assess risks and better manage risks in the supply chain and apply operational efficiencies," he said.
Mr Whelan did not see the challenges faced by ASEAN countries as inherently different from those faced globally, but some were more severe and some less than elsewhere, the biggest one being port congestion, what drives port congestion.
One thing that does not help is the new United Nations rule, the demand for VGM (verified gross mass) for every container born of the Safety of Life at Sea Convention. "When you look at ASEAN countries, we could point out to a couple of things that they have made more challenging. What do we see that the VGM implementation in ASEAN countries? Well, what was challenging was, one would be we know that there were country implications, what with countries like the Philippines and Malaysia you saw port level implementations being fairly descriptive in terms of how the region was going to be divided.
"In fact, in Port Klang, there was one platform by which that data was to be provided. So those are some of the risks that are probably a little more evident in ASEAN countries and so our question was what or how could INTTRA help mitigate or address those risks," he said.
Flexibility seemed to be key. Said Mr Whelan: "So you have to be flexible in terms of who is going to provide that information, who is the shipper, the third party provider, freight forwarder, the weighbridge? And who is to be provided with that information? Is it the carrier, the terminal operator? The gate?
"Or all of the above," he said, then explaining that INTTRA collects in and makes such information common property of all.
Turning to more general cause of port congestion, Mr Whelan said: "What we plan going forward is looking at shipping reliability and we have set up a set of metrics around shipping reliability in terms of an export and import basis. On an export basis: estimated time of departure, actual time of departure. On an import basis: estimated time of arrival, actual time of arrival. Also, the actual shipment transit time, actual versus estimated, then we’ll add all that up for a total score."
INTTRA hopes that such calculations based on the company's on data collection will provide revealing port-carrier comparisons and carrier port comparisons bringing alliance performance in TEU throughput, producing trends over time with a view to mitigating port harbour congestion. |
