New Digital Platform for Rate-Management Solutions

Hapag-Lloyd is the first liner shipping company to make it possible to digitally transfer contract data for its customers. To do so, Hapag-Lloyd has teamed up with the US-based company CargoSphere, which offers rate-management solutions to over 100 customers. The new platform, known as the electronic Smart Upload and Diagnostics Solution (eSUDS), is a cloud-based online portal. At the customer’s request, Hapag-Lloyd will directly feed all digitally available data alterations of contracts and service contracts as well as tariffs to CargoSphere on a daily basis. Customers will then be able to access this data online. This is a significant improvement over the current practice of sending emails with spreadsheets and PDF files, whose data is entered into the system either by CargoSphere on behalf of its customers or by the customers themselves. On top of that, the quality of the data is considerably improved in terms of timeliness and accuracy.

This completely standardized digital environment allows shippers and freight forwarders to view at all times their own contract rates, which Hapag-Lloyd will supply to the CargoSphere platform. This provides an opportunity to optimize this traditionally complex, time-consuming, error-prone and expensive aspect of ocean shipping as well as to advance digitalization efforts using concrete solutions.

Customers interested in benefiting from this solution should contact CargoSphere directly, as an existing contract must first be upgraded or a new contract concluded. Once this has happened, CargoSphere will contact Hapag-Lloyd so that the data transfer for the respective customer will be centrally activated by Global e-Business.