Proper business processes and IT-coverage for areas like quotation, booking and
documentation on the customer-facing side are important as are vessels’ schedule and
intermodal on the planning and execution side. A tremendous amount of data is being input
and derived to carry out the daily business.
| What really adds value to the business in terms of improved efficiency and customer added
value is overview, integration and cohesion, as well as intelligent usage of all data combined
with a rigid pursuit of improving data quality; output will be no better than the input.
Data quality is of extremely high importance to your customers – especially for rates on Bs/L
and invoices as if this is not in order, it may well heavily delay their cargo and payment, but
also to the line it has a major economical impact – assumption/example: |
- one million teus loaded per year
- incorrect rates/documentation on a third of all Bs/L
- one hour of rework for each B/L
- freight payment delayed one week
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Additional work and loss of interest amount to not less US$ 9 million annually.......
| In this context and to underline the importance of data quality and integration, I would like to state what one of the largest global shippers recently told me: |
- they are quite frustrated by the quality - or rather the lack of same – and timeliness of data and information received from most lines in a number of elements of the normal business process
- they high-lighted poor invoice accuracy as the biggest problem – in some areas as many as 50% of invoices get rejected the first time. The same was the case for bill of lading data quality
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They claim this to be because many lines don’t have the link between rates and documentation, and operate many systems which are not integrated.
They also required better E-commerce tools to increase visibility and improve track-and-trace facilities, but quality of documentation, terminal moves and billing is a top priority, and as conclusion they stated:
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Quality and Visibility are keywords – and it is a fact that major shippers will now apply IT usage and data quality as selection criteria to determine which carriers to use.
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This means that lines able to substantially improve and lead on data quality especially for rates on Bs/L and invoices, will also be rewarded accordingly by shippers.
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