APM Terminals (APMT) has made a personalisation option available as part of its roll-out of a standardised container tracking system for customers, enabling customers to save containers to a watchlist and set up email notifications.
Aiming to save time and optimise container flow, more than 22 of the company’s terminals provide access to container tracking, using its standard web interface, known as Track & Trace (T&T).
The solution will be rolled out to the operator’s terminals in Spain and Mumbai over the coming months.
Wiebe-Jan Kloosterman, landside digital solution manager at APMT, said: “This standardised approach not only offers convenience to customers working with multiple terminals but enables APMT to focus its investment in just one industry-leading platform instead of multiple, potentially less innovative solutions.”
Last quarter, the T&T platform saw the launch of a function that enables customers to save their import containers to a Container Watchlist.
“This saves customers time and effort, continually copying and pasting their containers into the search to retrieve the latest status,” added Kloosterman.
“Filtering options in the Container Watchlist allow customers, for example, to quickly identify containers that are ready for collection, missing appointments or have issues (e.g. Customs Holds) that need resolving.”
The company has introduced an email notification feature for containers in the Watchlist, available for APMT in Los Angeles, Port Elizabeth and Mobile in the US, while it will be rolled out to the remaining facilities on the T&T platform in November.
Customers can choose to receive the email snapshot of their Watchlist once or twice per day and can specify which exact days based on their convenience.
One central online customer account is used to access all T&T functions and going forward, this account will be used to access additional web features.
Kloosterman noted: “We acknowledge that in the past customers needed to have multiple accounts for different systems at different terminals, in order to do business with us.
“This isn’t ideal and requires time and patience from our customers. Going forward, our goal is to provide access to all of our services from one place, and with just one account.”
for example, customers who have already set up an account for terminal alerts – a system which sends customers urgent operational updates via sms or email – use the same login for container watchlist notifications.
Over the coming months, the operator plans to implement improved functionality and usability for live vessel schedules, which are currently available as part of T&T and to add live rail schedules, where relevant.
