Sixteen of the world's largest carriers, from Alianca Navegacao E Logistica to Columbus Line, Inc., Maersk Sealand and P&O Nedlloyd, are all banking on the Web being the best cost-savings device available. Just a year ago this October they unveiled a new Web portal¿INTTRA¿with the hope of pooling information on their services and resources in cyberspace to provide customers the real-time ability schedule and book shipments among their pool of carriers, not to mention tracking and tracing of shipments.

Like anything on the Web, there have been bumps and glitches over the past year. But INTTRA CEO Ken Bloom is more convinced than ever the Web can help reduce costs and promote supply chain efficiency for ocean trade.

"This is one of the toughest economic times for container carriers. They're all struggling and it's a challenge to remove costs from their systems," he says. "At the same time their customers have very high expectations of customer service functions like online order processing, status tracking and online documentation."

Maybe because of those concerns, he's found the industry responsive to the move to cyberspace business processing where, with a click of a mouse, it's possible to locate shipments, book shipments or track and trace goods in real-time. According to Bloom, the industry has embraced the change INTTRA has brought about very constructively: "We've been growing 32 percent a month in revenue, booking volumes and measures like that."

Part of the acceptance is because INTTRA doesn't promote itself as a Dot-Com. As Bloom explains: "We're not so much a Dot-Com as an industry consortium, which means we can host numbers from the carriers. We have what's called a huge amount of numbers. You get immediate confirmation from INTTRA via email of your booking and also get a carrier confirmation in the usual way in two hours," he says.

Bloom believes that INTTRA can remove hours from the usual booking process. For example, the portal's new Rapid Reservation service will provide a booking number so INTTRA customers can ultimately track their shipments on the Web.

"A number of carriers are already enrolled in this service. If you create a booking for one of those carriers, you will get an instantaneous reservation back," Bloom says. "That number will carry forward as your booking number."

Rayonier, an international forest products company headquartered in Jacksonville, Fla., is just one of INTTRA's many new customers. Rayonier director of transportation and distribution Terry Bunch says about half of his company's sales of specialty cellulose fibers are exported to more than 60 countries worldwide.

Given the costly outreach, Bunch says Rayonier agreed to act as pilot customer for INTTRA "to take the cost out of the system." The company liked the fact INTTRA provides both Web and electronic data interchange connectivity. "We saw an opportunity to improve the service we provide to our customers and take cost out of the system utilizing Web-based services."

And there have been definite benefits. "We have enjoyed improved accuracy, cycle time, and productivity in documentation and bookings," he says. Bunch echoes Bloom's concern that INTTRA start providing Web portals for the bill of lading process "as soon as is practical."

Bloom is expecting to roll out the bill of lading tool in December. That's later than folks like Bunch have hoped, but he says, "ultimately the idea of being able to present a draft bill of lading to a shipper for his online approval, or for him to remotely print, means big time labor savings."