Chapel Hill: Container freight rate volatility as seen on the main east-west tradelanes requires greater use of information technology to stay abreast of all the market movements, argues a senior shipping IT specialist today.
Neil Barni is the president of CargoSphere, the 1999-founded cloud-based global rate management solution and rate network for the ocean and air logistics sector.
“The volatility of rates on the transpacific and the Asia-Europe trades requires sophisticated technology to allow users to keep the rate repository in sync with the latest amendment,” Barni claims.
CargoSphere has proprietary technology to help get all rate information quickly and accurately entered in the CargoSphere database.
“Having all buy rates in the CargoSphere cloud-based application helps users reduce transportation costs by allowing optimal vendor selection, thereby eliminating over-paying for a freight move,” says Barni.
Barni says rate distribution today is complicated because rate structures are intentionally complex to make rate comparison more difficult. Multiple surcharges, some of which are floating, and bundled services, such as a rate that includes an inland move, make rate comparison even harder.
Rate receipt is complicated also because some carriers use Excel, others use Word or Acrobat. The files are moved around as email attachments on different schedules. All of this requires manual effort to collect, organize and process the information, something CargoSphere is on hand to resolve.
