Anyone who has been impacted by increasing container volumes and congestion at terminals understands first-hand the need for improvements in moving cargo more efficiently through ports.

Information is the key to better efficiency - more information about what's happening with shipments, updated more frequently, with better accuracy, so you're not left wondering whether you can trust if your container will arrive when it's supposed to.

One of the biggest obstacles standing in the way of better information is a lack of data standards. But getting the broader industry to come to agreement and develop global standards will be a long process, and it will only be successful with universal buy-in, which is no small task.

We don't believe in waiting for others to do work we can do ourselves. To address the issues around ocean cargo data, we built a platform that aggregates, normalizes, and verifies data for all ocean cargo coming in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico.

That's why we're not asking the steamship lines to create a standard for data access. Using the data that's available now, we provide our customers with a complete picture of what's happening with their shipments in a standardized format.

In addition, because data alone is not enough, we provide a service that monitors your shipments, issues alerts, and allows you to enrich your data and share information with your supply chain partners.

The ability to communicate and collaborate with your supply chain partners is critical, which is why we have an open platform. No one party gets a shipment to its destination. It's dozens and dozens of companies and their corresponding teams that make it happen. Global trade and logistics is built on these relationships.

It's the same thing with technology solutions. There are a lot of different options for addressing different logistics needs, and no one party will rule everything. Those who partner with others to create more value and better networks for their customers ultimately will be more successful, and will continue to elevate the industry as a whole.

As a by-product of these partnerships, we will start to see more efficiencies in the supply chain. Our customers have been able to reduce their average dwell times due to the efficiencies they've gained with better data from our platform. As a result, the terminals benefit from increasing their efficiency and throughput without any effort on their part.

Ports don't have to tackle the productivity issue on their own. Through partnerships, we can all work together to create efficiencies that benefit all parties in the supply chain.