www.dcvelocity.com APRIL 2018 DC VELOCITY 41
dictive analytics represent fertile areas as well, experts
say. William Rooney, vice president, strategic development for Swiss third-party logistics (3PL) giant Kuehne
+ Nagel, said at the same conference that the advanced
technologies could analyze shipper behavior from their
booking histories to differentiate between legitimate and
“phantom” bookings. In this area, Rooney said he is particularly excited by analytic technology being developed
by startup ClearMetal Inc.
Inna Kuznetsova, president and chief operating officer
of Inttra, a Parsippany, N.J.-based digital marketplace
that tracks the status of 45 percent of the world’s containers, said that, at baseline, technology makes it faster
and easier to change a booking on the fly. In the event a
container is delayed getting to the vessel or the shipment
is smaller than the shipper had forecast, an intermediary
can use digital tools to amend or cancel bookings and to
save 40 percent of the time it would take to perform the
task manually, Kuznetsova said. Beyond that, users can
leverage forecasting technology to improve their ability
to allocate containers more efficiently and, in the case of
carriers, get richer insight into booking patterns at different ports and more efficiently utilize their equipment,
she added.
Some experts, like Zvi Schreiber, chief executive officer
of Freightos Ltd., a Hong Kong-based online rate quote
portal, said turbocharged IT (information technology)
investments are not necessary to resolve the no-show
problem. “All that’s required is better two-way communication,” he said. However, with too many vessel slots
still chasing not enough freight, the question is whether
shippers and BCOs (beneficial cargo owners) have any
incentive to communicate. Another challenge for carriers
is persuading customers to pay higher rates to offset the
costs of significant IT investment, according to Philippe
Salles, head of e-business, transport, and supply chain
for Drewry.
Ira Breskin, a long-time maritime author, journalist,
and senior lecturer at the State University of New York’s
Maritime College, said changing market conditions will
eventually force shippers to pay more than lip service
to their contractual obligations. The combination of
carrier consolidation, the lingering effects of the August
2016 collapse of Korean liner company Hanjin Shipping
Co., and the growing impact of shipping alliances where
carriers reconcile capacity and reduce costs that soared
during a prolonged period of vessel over-ordering will
squeeze capacity to the point where carriers will begin to
have the upper hand, according to Breskin. This, in turn,
will change the shippers’ shoulder-shrugging mindset
toward the problem, he predicted.
Editor’s note: Toby Gooley, former editor of CSCMP’s
Supply Chain Quarterly, a sister publication to DC
VELOCITY, contributed to this report.
