APM Terminals’ container tracking platform receives industry-leading upgrade
As part of APM Terminals’ global roll-out of a standardised container tracking system for customers, the company has now made a personalisation option available. Among other things, this enables customers to save containers to a Container Watchlist and set up email notifications, to save time and optimise container flow, APM Terminals said in its release.
More than 22 of the company’s terminals provide access to container tracking, using the standard interface on www.apmterminals.com, known as Track & Trace (T&T). Over the coming months, this global solution will be rolled out to more terminals, including the company's terminals in Spain and Mumbai, which has a container throughput of more than 2m TEU.
“This standardised approach not only offers convenience to customers working with multiple terminals but enables APM Terminals to focus its investment in just one industry-leading platform instead of multiple, potentially less innovative solutions,” says Wiebe-Jan Kloosterman, Landside Digital Solution Manager at APM Terminals.
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,” says 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.”
This week, the company introduced an email notification feature for containers in the Watchlist. Available for APM Terminals in Los Angeles, Port Elizabeth and Mobile in the United States, it will be rolled out in November to the remaining terminals on the T&T platform. 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 apmterminals.com customer account is used to access all T&T functions. Going forward, this account will be used to access a growing number of features available on the website. “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,” says Kloosterman. “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 on apmterminals.com – a system which sends customers urgent operational updates via SMS or email – use the same login for Container Watchlist Notifications.
Over the coming months, APM Terminals 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.
