DB Schenker is one of a number of global 3PLs to offer digital quoting and booking in select trades, as container lines and forwarders provide shippers with procurement options. Photo credit: Shutterstock.com.
Freight forwarding software startup Qwyk has reached a deal to provide ocean sailing schedules to DB Schenker to underpin the third-party logistics provider’s (3PL’s) digital booking tools.
Netherlands-based Qwyk will integrate its schedule database of 90 container lines to Ocean 4.0, the ocean freight component of Schenker’s Connect 4.0 platform. Connect 4.0 allows shippers to check instant rates and make instant bookings across the 3PL’s network of ocean, air, and surface transportation capacity.
More specifically, access to accurate liner schedule data is critical in allowing forwarders to offer instant bookings on specific vessels for shippers. Schenker’s Ocean 4.0 product is marketed in much the same way other recent online booking products have been in that it ties instant bookings to a specific sailing.
Getting accurate schedule data has often been hampered by an inability to tie a vessel to a specific voyage. That process has long been handled manually or via electronic data interchange (EDI) connections by schedule data providers; other prominent names in the market include Ocean Insights and BlueWater Reporting.
Schedules key to booking specific slots
The issue is further complicated by the fact that global 3PLs have to manage their buy rates from container lines, the rates for their own consolidation services, and their own branded full containerload (FCL) rates. Coordinating those three rate matrices is necessary for a 3PL to effectively sell its capacity dynamically, and then aligning that to specific sailings is necessary to sell a specific slot dynamically.
“Schenker is investing heavily in digitization,” Florian Braun, vice president of Ocean 4.0 for DB Schenker, said in a statement. “On sailing schedule management, however, Qwyk was offering the easiest and most comprehensive solution for Schenker.”
The ease of use of Qwyk’s platform may have been a deciding factor for Schenker, JOC.com understands, as the tool allows for web-based maintenance of schedule data for full- and less-than-containerload (LCL) schedules. Schenker uses multiple sources of schedule data to enable its digital offerings.
Ocean carrier schedule data has long been a thorn in the side of the industry, as it requires collection and normalization of data across numerous formats. Container lines provide both pro forma schedules — which show a given service’s standard port rotation and transit times — and subsequent vessel status updates in numerous ways, including EDI, Excel spreadsheet, and web services application programming interfaces (APIs). Industry reliance on pro forma schedules means data is often out of alignment with real-time needs, because actual sailings often end up being off by a day or two. Pro forma schedules also don’t generally show skipped sailings or ad hoc calls, and often don’t say which vessels are assigned to a service.
Contact Eric Johnson at [email protected] and follow him on Twitter: @LogTechEric.
