Sailing online

Introducing new technology to a traditional industry can be a painfully slow process after all, as the saying goes, it takes a long time to turn a large ship. But the Alameda, Calif.-based GTN Ocean Carrier Consortium, a logistics portal that streamlines the shipping process, has found relatively quick acceptance among shippers and customers alike.

It would be fair to say it took a little bit of time for customer acceptance, but right now we’re well through the proof-of-concept phase, and it’s becoming a proven business solution. People recognize it as a valuable business contribution, and they see the benefit [of the portal], says Cynthia Stoddard, vice president and CIO of Oakland, Calif.-based APL.

APL is one of 13 ocean carriers in the consortium, which is overseen by a neutral governance body that makes sure initiatives are mutually beneficial for all members. The consortium was formed in part to look at ways of standardizing business practices and come up with a common underlying platform to perform certain business functions, Stoddard adds.

To accomplish that, the consortium, along with logistics software provider GT Nexus, created the GTN (Global Transportation Network) portal to offer customers a one-stop Web site for their ocean shipping needs. The portal handles bookings, keeps track of schedules and rates, and manages contracts, so a user can view all the ocean carriers’ offerings in one place and track and trace orders.

Some carriers in the consortium also use the portal internally to manage contracts and the copious documentation involved in ocean shipping the average ocean move involves more than 20 documents, Stoddard says.

Built on a J2EE architecture and using technology including BEA WebLogic, Vitria’s BPM (business process management) software, and integration tools developed by GT Nexus, the Web-based front-end links into each carriers’ proprietary systems so that employees need not learn a brand-new transaction system.

One of the keys was to ensure that we didn’t create any additional work within the carrier network, so there was integration that was required but not really any new development, Stoddard say, adding that the greatest challenge was internal adoption of the new technology and processes.

It’s a different way of thinking for some people, Stoddard explains. When you start to do changes like this, which are really forcing standardization in the industry, it takes some time to sell that internally.

Indeed, having the consortium in place helped stress the importance of the portal project after all, bringing together multiple companies is generally not a recipe for success, acknowledges Vijay Sundaram, vice president and co-founder of GT Nexus.

Typically, [consortia fail] because there are two or three things that come up: They have to manage conflict; they need to trust each other; and they need to keep up the competitive spirit, so they also have to have a way of resolving differences, Sundaram explains. By forming the Carrier Executive Council, the neutral governance body, carriers had reassurance that the consortium would act in everyone’s best interest.

The portal was rolled out in phases, with the basic framework in place in April 2001 but with more transactions sets and functionality coming in September and later months. Since each set of transactions could potentially include multiple carriers, multiple jobs, and varied cargoes, the portal had to be robust enough to handle all of this and be ready to take on more features in the future as the carriers build out their online capabilities.

From our standpoint, it gives us additional channels to reach out to our customers, so it’s very exciting for us, APL’s Stoddard says. [Customers] have one way of doing business with us and some of their other carriers [in the consortium], and the portal gives them and us a mechanism for reducing errors. It’s been a very good business value to both sides, our customers and us internally.

Over time, there’s been an overwhelming recognition that e-commerce is going to change the way companies interact with their customers, especially in a lot of the transactional businesses, GT Nexus’ Sundaram says, noting that the Internet lowers the cost to participate in these new business processes.

Over the past year, the consortium and GT Nexus have added several vital blocks of features to the portal, including the addition of multidevice shipment alerts and other document management technologies in November 2001 and a March 2002 addition that included shipment visibility/tracking features and full support for EDI and XML customer integrations.

With these functionalities in place, the consortium has seen even greater uptake: The portal now has 5,000 registrants, representing 2,500 companies worldwide, and processes more than 32,000 messages daily increasing at a rate of 40 percent to 50 percent each month, according to APL’s Stoddard. New features are continually added every three to four months as customers’ needs are identified and addressed.

[Ocean shipping] is a very old industry, Stoddard says, noting that the companies have a history of working together over the years. If you put that into the equation when you talk about the number of people that have to come together in this consortium and into the governance board, it’s very interesting to contemplate what was done.