Dynamic Ocean platform enhancements reset the bar for international ocean shipping visibility
FourKites introduces several powerful capabilities to help international shippers identify and mitigate the risks and costs associated with runaway demurrage and detention (D&D) fees more quickly and proactively. Shippers can also prioritise exceptions according to likely business impact and adjust carriers, lanes or other factors as necessary.
Port congestion, vessel delays, and incorrect or incomplete documentation are common challenges for ocean shippers. Unprecedented global container shortages, port closures, natural disasters, COVID-19 and other recent incidents have exacerbated these issues. D&D fees have reached thousands of dollars per container per day and millions of dollars in annual transportation costs for many shippers. This prompted the Federal Maritime Commission (FMC) to consider new regulations to reign in ocean carrier billing practices.
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“Attacking D&D fees requires a true end-to-end visibility solution that combines document visibility, yard visibility and robust notifications and alerting so shippers can mitigate fees before they occur. That’s Dynamic Ocean in a nutshell.”
FourKites’ new D&D product suite is available as part of the company’s Dynamic Ocean℠ platform. This platform includes precise end-to-end freight tracking, the industry’s most accurate predictive ETAs, international document management and booking functionality.
“Detention and demurrage fees have become a scourge for shippers, and when piled on top of rising transportation expenses, can make profit margins plummet,” said Chris Stauber, vice president of products and international solutions at FourKites. “Attacking D&D fees requires a true end-to-end visibility solution that combines document visibility, yard visibility and robust notifications and alerting so shippers can mitigate fees before they occur. That’s Dynamic Ocean in a nutshell.”
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The new capabilities include:
- Exception dashboards, notifications and alerts that monitor and track containers that are likely to incur D&D fees based on real-time rerouting alerts and dwell time data for all ocean shipments. Using these real-time dashboards, customers can prioritise the containers that are currently accumulating fees, or that are at risk of doing so.
- Analytics dashboards that scrutinise performance trends by lane, carrier, stop and other factors to pinpoint systemic problem areas.
- Ability to monetise the potential (and actual) financial impacts of demurrage and detention fees on your transportation costs, enabling you to prioritise the most costly cargo.
- A digital document hub to manage essential international shipping documents accurately and on time, with powerful collaboration tools and easily customisable workflows, alerts and notifications to mitigate shipping delays and unnecessary D&D fees.
Momentum builds for FourKites in international ocean shipping
Over the last 12 months, ocean volume tracked on the FourKites platform has increased 232%, while ocean customers have increased nearly 4X over the same period. Customers include Cardinal Health, Arizona Tile, LyondellBasell, McCain Foods, Roehm, Rove Concepts and Yamaha Motors. Dynamic Ocean covers 98% of global ocean shipments, 100% of terminals in North America, and the majority of terminals in Europe and Australia/New Zealand.
“FourKites’ automated reporting and tracking for ocean provides more accurate and real-time data, which allows Canfor to respond to customer inquiries quicker with up-to-date information on our upcoming shipments that would have otherwise had to be manually tracked,” said Bob Hayes, Vice President of Global Supply Chain at Canfor.