INTTRA Unveils a New Suite of Applications Boosting Operational Effectiveness

INTTRA, the largest neutral electronic transaction platform, software and information provider at the center of the ocean shipping industry, has announced two new cloud-based products and enhancements.  The first is a new Container Forecasting and Allocation Solutions Tool (C-FAST) for Freight Forwarders and NVOCC's that matches the forecast of their customers' anticipated container volume to carrier capacity availability. The second is an enhanced version of its Ocean Schedules offering that optimizes the shipment planning experience for ocean supply chain professionals. 

The announcements were made in Singapore at INTTRA's Asia Technology Summit, a forum attended by approximately 200 senior industry leaders to share their views on how digitization and technology are changing the ocean industry sector, and where INTTRA outlined its technology whitepaper - Blueprint 2032: How Technology Transforms Ocean Container Shipping.

INTTRA's new C-FAST addresses a key issue, which is forecasting and allocating for future customer shipments can be a complicated, time consuming manual process requiring collecting multiple customer and carrier contract data. INTTRA C-FAST can help achieve up to 40 percent operational improvement in organizations, and up to $4 million annual cost savings across multiple operating regions.

INTTRA C-FAST offers automated allocation solutions that optimize contract management and enhance customer planning with improved matching capabilities by performing the allocation of customer forecasting and carrier availability commitments, resulting in impressive, easy-to-interpret cargo steering recommendations. Initiated with easily imported customer forecasts, carrier commitments and contracts, C-FAST considers quantity commitment, contract type, and carrier-space contractual obligations by port to optimize decisions.  Further, it enables a dashboard review of planned-to-actual bookings, which also helps ocean leaders plan for next year's costs and minimum-quantity commitments from carrier suppliers. 

"The ocean shipping industry is becoming increasingly interconnected, driving towards full digitization, with technology enabling businesses to improve operationally and financially," said John Fay, CEO of INTTRA. "Our goal is to help our customers fully embrace digitization, providing the best products and services to optimize and deliver more efficient logistics management. The introduction of C-FAST and offering a newer generation of Ocean Schedules is just the beginning of a much larger phase." 

"INTTRA has understood the requirements of capacity management by launching a product which combines the carrier's space management with our customer's forecasting. With an easy-to-use GUI and direct response to bookings made we believe to have found a tool which makes our sea freight world a lot more efficient." said Johannes Saade, Global Head of Trade Management for Hellmann Worldwide Logistics Air & Sea GmbH & Co. KG.
  
"Container allocation is a critical process in how we support our customers' most strategic demands", said Matthew Burgess, VP, Global Ocean Consolidation Services at JAS Worldwide Management, Inc. "Gaining access to an automated tool like C-FAST would better enable us to prioritize, organize and manage the steering of cargo for multiple clientele, allowing JAS to maintain focus on the continued growth of its business and manage our key carrier providers."

"C-FAST will help NVOs and freight forwarders drive operational efficiency, improve procurement strategies and enhance vendor management practices in order to accelerate their business growth," said Inna Kuznetsova, President and COO of INTTRA. "Our user friendly, collaborative tool improves global operations and decision making by providing an automated and intuitive contract-aware allocation process."

Enhanced Cloud-Based Ocean Schedules Product Offering Introduced

INTTRA also launched an enhanced version of its industry leading Ocean Schedules product offering, which for the past ten years has been a key tool in the planning process for ocean supply chain professionals. INTTRA's upgraded Ocean Schedules is now cloud-based and is available with an expanded data set and the latest web services application programming interface (API) technology. 

Ocean Schedules is offered with a new, enhanced web interface for users of INTTRA's ocean shipping web portal, in addition to a new API for customers who want to integrate schedules data into their TMS, rate management system or other in-house applications.  INTTRA also offers ocean carriers a new API for direct request/response access to their schedules data that provides end-users with the most current information direct from the carrier's scheduling system.

"We listened carefully to the needs of supply chain professionals when designing our cloud-enhanced Ocean Schedules," said Jeff Howard, Senior VP, Product Management and Chief Product Officer at INTTRA. "The new Ocean Schedules API enables forwarders and cargo owners to easily integrate the latest schedules data from over 35 carriers directly into their transportation management or rates management systems and reduce shipment planning times by up to 80 percent."

New enhancements support:
 
?  Transshipment details for selected carriers and port pairs to enable more informed route selection 

?  Terminal cut-off dates that alert users when containers are expected at the terminal

?   Service names for the service loop in which the vessel sails, while also indicating transshipment between services 

?    A new user-friendly web interface that supports expanded data sets with additional filters such as schedule comparison and personalized search settings to enable a more customized search experience for individual business needs

These enhancements are in addition to its continuing support of transit times, vessel details, and voyage numbers in port-to-port searches. For more information about INTTRA's new cloud-based C-FAST and updated Ocean Schedules, please visit INTTRA at https://www.inttra.com/.

About INTTRA

INTTRA is the largest neutral electronic transaction platform, software and information provider at the center of the ocean shipping industry. INTTRA's innovative products, combined with the scale of our network, empower our customers to trade with multiple parties and leverage ocean industry information to improve their business. Connecting over 225,000 shipping professionals with more than 50 leading Carriers and over 130 software alliance partners, INTTRA streamlines the ocean trade process. Over 800,000 container orders are initiated on the INTTRA platform each week, representing over one quarter of global ocean container trade.