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CargoSmart launches Big Schedules to help shippers see more faster

HONG KONG's CargoSmart, a software provider that leverages big data for greater visibility, has announced Big Schedules, a new sailing schedule search function to help shippers and forwarders manage and visualise ocean routes.

Big Schedules sources carriers' sailing schedules and live vessel locations to provide personalised search results for faster insights to improve shipment planning. The new, free sailing schedule search engine is available at www.bigschedules.com.

During the US west coast port congestion over the last year, shippers struggled to get sailing schedules to make bookings and communicate updates to receiving parties, said the CargoSmart release.

Despite port congestion improving, over five million sailing schedule changes around the globe occurred in the month of May 2015 alone. Not having the latest schedules can be costly with increased demurrage charges and missed container cut-off times.

"We are pleased to offer a new sailing schedule search platform that leverages big data sources," said Lionel Louie, chief commercial officer of CargoSmart.

"By gathering data from multiple sources and using new technologies to streamline the search process, Big Schedules empowers shippers and logistics service providers to search for the latest schedule information, faster, and to gain insights for planning," said Mr Louie.

Big Schedules uses a new methodology to deliver up-to-date sailing schedules. The search engine sources schedule data from multiple sources on-demand and displays it in a fast, flexible platform. Its scope includes 30 major ocean carriers, over 46,000 port pairs, and nearly 5,000 vessel services that cover 90 per cent of the world's container capacity.

The new sailing schedule platform helps shipment parties link sailing schedules with vessel, service, and shipment information to provide a single view of their ocean schedules and to visualise shipment routes. The intelligent features include:

Live Data - From on-demand queries to current vessel locations, schedule data is updated continuously so that users have the latest published schedules available.

Visualisation - The search results display the vessel's current location on a map for users to see if a vessel is on track to meet its schedule and to improve planning.

Personalisation - The platform remembers users' recent searches, saved favourite searches, and the overall top port-pair searches to make recommendations to search faster and save time.

Insights - In addition to comparing schedules and actual vessel locations, users can look up schedule reliability percentages and average delay deviations by carrier for five popular port-pairs to gauge the chances of on time arrivals.