Besides the shippers, it seems that carriers also have to pay for providing the service through Inttra. 1 shipping platform endorsed by the top carriers, Inttra's services are broadly integrated into TMS and similar software suits and are still affordable. Probably due to its background, as the no. In an insightful blog post from 2018, following the E2Open acquisition, Lars Jensen, a leading expert in the ocean shipping industry, poignantly analyzes how Inttra's role has evolved (from being carrier-owned to 100% owned by e2Open) and how the longstanding ocean carrier collaboration is ending.īesides a graphical user interface web portal, Inttra also offers integrations interfaces, mostly traditional EDIFACT and XML based, but more recently also APIs. Inttra, nowadays fully owned by global supply chain software house E2Open, claims to handle over 25% of global container order volume. The prime and most established global Carrier-agnostic ocean booking and tracking platform is the 20-year old Inttra. ![]() Major Ocean Tracking Platforms Carrier agnostic platform(s) However, the fact that Martine Traffic and its peers have launched APIs and related services indicates they are well aware of the usefulness of their data for global trade and supply chain management. Many of the millions of visitors on these sites are non-commercial (think individuals with sailing boats, maritime hobbyists etc.). ![]() You can find an overview of the top-8 of such websites here. Probably the leading of these sites is Marine Traffic which proclaims to be "The #1 marine-related website" with over 6.5 million unique visitors and 80 million page views per month on average. Many websites offer free visualized ocean vessel tracking information based on AIS (Automatic Identification System) data. The industry grapevine is that several such implementations have been completed even though there is hardly any public information such as API descriptions in DCSA format on the Carriers websites available covering track & trace messaging-at the time of publication of this post. The nine carrier members of the DCSA (Digital Container Shipping Association), which are the above-mentioned top-10 carriers, except for COSCO, have committed themselves to offering API integrations in the newly established DCSA formats when a customer requests them. APIs are starting to replace EDIFACT interfaces, which are still the standard.Also, as specifications can change and you might want to onboard new carriers, this is continuous updating and maintenance work lasting forever. That means, if you use more than one carrier, you (your IT) must do mapping and status code & name harmonization work when implementing the integration, i.e., build the mapping logic in-house. E.g., the standard "loaded on vessel" status event in a standard IFTSTA (EDIFACT status message) message will be "STS+1+IIT::22'", "STS+1+AE" or "STS+1+48::2" depending on which carrier you integrate with. Even though most carriers are using EDIFACT/ANSI X12, each carrier interface has its own nuances.Ocean Carrier Integration InterfacesĪll the top carriers offer different types of direct integration interfaces. Most of the top-10 carriers offer three main search parameters (container number, booking number, bill of lading number), some only two, others only one.įun fact: Yang Ming also seems to offer search by "P.O.All top-10 Ocean carriers (Maersk, MSC, COSCO, CMA-CGM, Hapag-Lloyd, ONE, Evergreen, HMM, Yang Ming, ZIM), have a public (non-login) tracking widget, directly on their start page, or one click away.The major carriers provide standard tracking information on their websites. Configurable notifications provide the value needed to shippers, freight forwarders, BCOs, etc. Whatever the source of information, and whatever the method of getting the data is, the information should be shared proactively with key stakeholders, especially when anomalies and exceptions occur. ![]() ![]() This article will summarize the different data sources for retrieving relevant tracking information, discuss their pros and cons, and make suggestions regarding how to get better data coverage. In our previous blog article, Why and How to Keep Track of Your Container Shipments, we elaborated on what we think is the most efficient way to follow your ocean shipment: directly from your main operational system, be it an ERP, TMS, or other supply chain management system.
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