INTTRA offers new forecast-allocation tool

The ocean freight technology provider’s new product is geared toward letting forwarders better manage data related to customer booking forecasts and carrier contract commitments.    The ocean freight technology platform INTTRA on Tuesday released a new tool designed to help forwarders manage forecast demand for container bookings and their contract allocations with carriers.
   The new product, called C-FAST, is meant to alleviate an endemic problem for forwarders: a lack of coordination on the key data points that underpin in-the-moment booking decisions.
   Inna Kuznetsova, chief operating officer and president of INTTRA, told American Shipper development of the tool was driven by specific requests from forwarders for better capability in managing and optimizing the intersection of carrier allocation commitments and shipper booking forecasts.
   The problem, as Kuznetsova described, is the disparate nature of forwarding operations, and the lack of a common connective system. That absence of a simultaneous view of forecast data and carrier contracts prevents forwarders from reaping the benefits of meeting minimum quantity commitment (MQC) clauses in their contracts with carriers, because forwarders often make real-time decisions without knowing where they stand on specific annual contract commitments.
   Kuznetsova gave an example from her time at a freight forwarder. The forwarder was close to meeting its annual MQC with a specific carrier, but an office in Asia didn’t have a view into that contract and so made spot bookings with the same carrier. Although the spot rates were lower than the contract rates, the overall negative impact of not meeting the volume commitment (and the benefits associated with doing so) more than offset the positive impact of lower rates.
   INTTRA has been piloting a beta version of the tool with a number of forwarders the past few weeks.
   “INTTRA has understood the requirements of capacity management by launching a product which combines the carrier’s space management with our customer’s forecasting,” Johannes Saade, global head of trade management at Hellman Worldwide Logistics, said in a statement. “With an easy-to-use (graphical user interface) and direct response to bookings, made, we believe we have found a tool which makes our sea freight world a lot more efficient.”
   The forecast tool, developed on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud platform, has a card-based interface that allows users to upload contract data and shuffle through their various contracts with carriers. Given that the average forwarder booking with INTTRA uses 25 carriers, often with multiple contracts per carrier, the allocation management aspect is critical.
   “Space commitment management in the shipping industry is very complex due to various evaluation parameters of each carrier,” said Joschka Blume, supply chain management and project manager, Prologue Solutions. “A standardization of these parameters through a software tool could improve the commitment utilization and handling of space protection.”
   The forecast and allocation product is being released in tandem with upgrades to INTTRA’s ocean schedules tool. That product has been enhanced to better navigate transshipment points, to provide cargo cut-off times associated with specific sailings, and via application programming interfaces (APIs) with carriers.
   The latter feature is designed to cut down on the amount of schedule data carriers submit to INTTRA (generally via electronic data interchange or spreadsheet) by allowing the user to effectively search through the carrier’s internal schedule data.
   INTTRA is in the process of onboarding carriers via API, but Kuznetsova said some carriers are leading the way, while others are further behind in their readiness to expose their data via an API.
   She said the value of forecast and allocation tool is not just confined to forwarders, but would also help carriers indirectly.
   “As forwarder collect forecasts from their customer throughout the year, they can see patterns, and how reliable the customers is,” she said. “That allows them to allocate capacity in a certain way, and be more selective in managing those accounts. That provides value to carriers and shippers as well.”