INTTRA's roadmap forward - FreightWaves

INTTRAÆs roadmap forward       Since its founding in November 2000, INTTRA's role in the containerized ocean shipping business has been a hot topic of discussion. Many have speculated

about the company's prospects for success and wondered where it is headed.       Today, the Parsippany N.J.-based company employs more than 250 people on four continents and connects to

30 ocean carriers representing about 80 percent of the world's container shipping capacity.       'Roughly 10 percent of global ocean container trade is initiated on the INTTRA

platform,' said Harry Sangree, senior vice president of business development and corporate strategy. He estimates revenue from these transactions accounts for roughly 85 percent of

INTTRA's business.       In March, INTTRA announced that five of its major carrier owners, including Maersk Line, Mediterranean Shipping Co. and CMA-CGM, pledged $100 million in

contracts to INTTRA over the next three years. At the same time the company announced changes to its pricing model that will for the first time allow carriers to buy INTTRA transactional and

professional services separately. A month later the company entered an agreement to deploy a financial settlement application with Deutsche Bank in the fourth quarter of 2009.       To many

industry analysts and observers this series of announcements may give the impression the company is moving away from its charter to provide ocean carriers a centralized booking platform and

transforming itself into an applications provider for shippers and freight forwarders as other booking portals have done during this decade.       _American Shipper_ recently sat down with

Sangree to shed some light on INTTRA's position in the market, the drivers behind these recent announcements, and the company's roadmap moving forward.       'There has been

no change in ownership,' Sangree said in reference to the financial event that took place in the spring. 'This cash flow has allowed us to continue to invest in enhancing our

mainstay product and develop a front-end and back-end expansion.       'Our carriers see the cost savings they're getting from INTTRA today and are asking where else they can work

with us to create savings,' he said. 'The natural extension is to look at business processes before and after the shipment initiation.'       Speaking to INTTRA's

financial position in the bigger picture, Sangree called the company 'operationally profitable,' repeating words that INTTRA's Chief Executive Officer Ken Bloom used in an

_American Shipper_ interview several years ago. FOCUS ON CARRIERS. Sangree said INTTRA remains committed to servicing the ocean carrier industry. 'It's all about lowering

costs,' he said. 'Now we're expanding the current footprint beyond the portal to include customer acquisition on the front end and financial settlement on the back end.      

'We service 10 percent of the market for our mainstay product. There's still 90 percent left which is a huge growth opportunity' Sangree added.       In the July 2008

_American Shipper_ (pages 68-86), MergeGlobal valued the ocean carrier industry at more than $200 billion per year globally. 'Focus, industry knowledge and ecommerce expertise allows us

to serve this market exceptionally well,' Sangree said.       INTTRA refers to its 10-year-old mainstay business as shipment initiation and management. The functionalities that this

activity includes are:       ' Booking request.       ' Confirmation.       ' Shipping order submission.       ' Shipping instruction submission.       ' Bill of

lading review.       ' Visibility and tracking.       'We are always investing in this segment of our platform to make the data stream richer and faster,' Sangree said. Later

this year and early 2010, the company will release an upgraded version of INTTRA-Act, its Web-based tool, which takes advantage of new technologies leveraged in OceanSchedules.com.

'This new version will increase the company's ability to take on more transactions and increase the scope of our offering,' Sangree said. CUSTOMER ACQUISITION. In January

2007, INTTRA unveiled its OceanSchedules.com Web site, which allows all container carriers ' customer or not ' to post sailing schedules, and anyone to query the database at no

charge. Logistics service providers from all segments can advertise next to search results relevant to the services they are pitching, much like Google has made keyword advertising famous on

its search engine. On the surface this appears to be a relatively simple and logical extension of INTTRA's core business, but to the company it's far more strategic.      

'We have more than 8 million schedules in our database,' Sangree said. 'We are seeing active buyers using the Web site and we think we can offer additional value to meet the

needs of this community and their carriers. OceanSchedules.com is already offering a one-to-one marketing opportunity that did not exist in this market.'       The OceanSchedules.com

functionality encompasses much of INTTRA's front-end enhancements, also called 'customer acquisition' by the company. This includes sales lead generation, carrier branding,

pricing, and route/schedule selection. For carriers that participate in INTTRA, OceanSchedules.com allows them to receive bookings from users who search and select services, which ties this

activity directly into INTTRA's booking platform.       'We recently reached 25,000 schedule search queries per week on the Web site and we see a tremendous opportunity to increase

traffic further,' Sangree said. FREIGHT SETTLEMENT. More recently INTTRA made an interesting announcement with Deutsche Bank, a global investment bank based in Germany. The two groups

will jointly introduce a freight settlement application in the fourth quarter with the goal of cutting transaction processing costs by half. The companies estimate that 150 million invoices

are created each year with an average cost of $20 to $60 per invoice, which makes this a considerable opportunity for technology to wring costs out of the system.       'INTTRA eInvoice

will allow carriers and their customers to save by eliminating costly errors, streamlining dispute resolution and improve productivity in the collections process,' Sangree said.      

The roadmap INTTRA provided to _American Shipper_ claims the financial settlement, or back-end expansion, portion of the company's footprint will provide invoice presentation, dispute

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