The emergence of new competitors and business models are making connectivity and collaboration a necessary best practice for carriers seeking to innovate and future-proof their operations.

Why collaborate?

Progressive shippers and carriers are increasingly realizing the value of collaboration in creating greater standardization and efficiency. In collaboration, every partner plays an important role in bringing value to the relationship. Effective communication across partners in shipping, enables a flow of knowledge across the supply chain that generates shared benefits and better long-term business sustainability for all.

What are these shared benefits? Here are four we believe are most significant to the industry.

1. Growth optimization
   Continuous growth and optimization of commercial trade depends highly on the quality and efficiency of logistics management, which in turn depends on timely and accurate communication.The ocean supply chain involves many regulatory checks for customs compliance, restrictions and prohibitions. Complying with these requirements can be highly time-consuming and resource-intensive. Applications such as OPUS Logistics provide a connected platform that helps reduce ambiguity often encountered in these checks. This connectedness engenders greater response agility for better transparency and dynamism within the partner network.

   Real-time visibility of collaborated data also creates better synchronization in information exchange, reducing duplication and speeding up business cycles. Liner management solutions such as ALLEGRO deliver sophisticated revenue, cost reconciliation and exception management functions for greater visibility that can help carriers uncover trading opportunities previously encumbered by manual processes. Examples of these include removing inconsistent customer terms and conditions, or combining cargoes bound for destinations on a common route; both of which could result in significant value opportunities for carriers.

2. Interoperability
   The Digital Container Shipping Association has identified interoperability as a key element for the container shipping industry to transform and adapt to the digital era[1]. This involves moving away from silo-ed information management and embracing collaboration to enhance industry-wide solutions for standardizing and transmitting data.By encouraging cross-partner exchange of digital information, carriers can contribute towards these efforts of standardizing communication formats and data collection and analysis. Accurate data and common consensus create a single view of the collaborative elements in real-time for all parties in the network. The same data can also be integrated back to individual legacy systems to ensure seamless synchronisation. This ensures that critical data and information is communicated dynamically so shippers can obtain the latest vessel schedule changes and exceptions such as port skips to prevent operating with outdated information.
3. Standardization
   Collaboration in data exchange also enables the creation of standardized benchmarks for key performance indicator tracking. These standardized metrics and information can be leveraged in multiple ways.Without access to timely and accurate data, carriers could end up incurring additional costs in information and account reconciliation. The availability of these metrics enables carriers to partner with their stakeholders in reviewing existing processes for potential simplification and further automation. Secondly, the metrics can also be used to further industry-level discussions on improving best practices and driving greater harmonization in standards and systems within the maritime industry.
4. Safety
   Timely and accurate information-sharing is crucial for ensuring shipment safety throughout the passage of delivery. The shipping industry has long borne the brunt of losses in cargo, revenue, time and worst of all, lives, due to unscrupulous or ignorant shippers who fail to abide by regulations governing declaration of dangerous goods.When solutions are built to effectively preserve data integrity, applying blockchain can reinforce the immutable state of the data. Information that is to be shared and exchanged should reside on a platform that reinforces and preserves the distributed data. This provides an increased level of safety with regards to DG shipment details and cargo segregation.

   According to Rolf Habben Jansen, CEO of Hapag-Lloyd[2], the group is pushing very hard for cross-line collaboration where information on misdeclaration of goods should be shared between all the lines to promote better checking and if needed, bans on errant shippers to materially reduce the risk that something goes wrong at sea. This effort, along with industry-wide co-operation on e-VGM and IMDG regulations, could go a long way in preventing incidents such as the 2015 Tianjin hazardous goods explosion[3].

   Collaboration can also help mitigate risks associated with miscommunication, a major root cause of safety issues in port-side cargo management. Effective real-time dissemination of critical information via an effective collaboration platform for information-sharing and updates could possibly have helped prevent accidents such as the Port of Vancouver crane incident in January 2019[4].

Enhanced visibility, optimization and sustainability

Today’s smart carriers understand that collaboration done right brings significant and immense benefits, not just to themselves but for the broader industry. Strategic sharing and leveraging of similar technologies and procedures lowers the cost of technology adoption, empowers better operational visibility and creates better long-term sustainability.

Leading the collaboration evolution in maritime

CyberLogitec is leading technological best practices in maritime with next-generation supply chain solutions that empower carriers to maximize collaboration and cooperation through the seamless exchange of real-time information. Optimize your operations with cutting-edge collaboration and integration today.

[1] Source: https://www.maritime-executive.com/article/five-ocean-carriers-join-digital-container-shipping-association

[2] Source: https://www.joc.com/regulation-policy/transportation-regulations/international-transportation-regulations/classification-confusion-hampers-dangerous-cargo-declaration_20190208.html

[3] Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-37927158

[4] Source: https://bc.ctvnews.ca/accident-at-port-of-vancouver-sends-crane-toppling-onto-container-ship-1.4272129