INTTRA, the ocean container shipping industry’s largest neutral network, has added two new cloud-based products and enhancements — the Container Forecasting and Allocation Solutions Tool (C-FAST) and an update for its Ocean Schedules offering.
The Container Forecasting and Allocation Solutions Tool (C-FAST) can match the forecast of freight forwarders’ customers’ expected container volume to carrier capacity availability.
Ocean Schedules can optimize shipment planning for ocean supply chain professionals.
INTTRA has reported that C-FAST, an automated allocation solution, can simplify forecasting and allocating customer shipments, and is able to achieve up to 40% operational improvement in organizations and up to $4 million annual cost savings across multiple operating regions.
C-FAST can 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.
In its C-FAST announcement, INTTRA said that the software can be initiated with “easily imported customer forecasts, carrier commitments and contracts” and considers quantity commitment, contract type, and carrier-space contractual obligations by port to optimize decisions.
It also 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 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 Port Technology technical paper — Blueprint 2032: How Technology Transforms Ocean Container Shipping.
Read a related technical paper from INTTRA on how digital technology is set to change ocean container shipping in the next decade
Commenting on C-FAST, John Fay, CEO of INTTRA, said: “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.”
Inna Kuznetsova, President and COO of INTTRA, added to Fay’s comments on C-FAST.
She said: “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.”
Kuznetsova will explain more about INTTRA's innovation and how the industry can digitize its operations at the Container Terminal Automation Conference
INTTRA’s enhanced version of its industry leading Ocean Schedules product offering has, for the past ten years, been a key tool in the planning process for ocean supply chain professionals.
Ocean Schedules is now cloud-based and is available with an expanded data set and the latest web services application programming interface (API) technology.
It also has 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.
Jeff Howard, Senior VP, Product Management and Chief Product Officer at INTTRA, said: “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.”