Chapel Hill, N.C.—Mar. 4, 2014—CargoSphere, a cloud-based global rate management solution, and confidential Rate Mesh Network for the ocean and air transportation and logistics industries, announced major enhancements to the Smart Upload and Diagnostics Solution (SUDS) with the release of SUDS version 2.0 due out in late March.
SUDS is a technological framework that intelligently reads and processes external freight rate data directly from any static document, such as carrier contract spreadsheets, and loads it into a dynamic rate system database. With SUDS version 2.0, automating the management of major pricing components, including base rates, surcharges and inland rates, can be realized. In addition, the base rate functionality of version 1.0 was significantly enriched over the past months for commodities, named accounts, service levels, and effective dates as clients processed nearly 6,000 contracts and rate sheets with SUDS.
Prominent in ocean pricing, carrier agreements often specify commodity groups, named accounts, service levels, surcharges, general rate increases, tariff applicability, and a host of effective dates in nonstandard and unique ways. This makes it exceedingly difficult for global rate administrators to systemize this data efficiently and cost effectively. What’s more, these static files simply do not provide bottom line costs. SUDS 2.0 takes a step forward in automating the processing of this complex data, allowing rate administrators to find and define any pricing term in a file, and convert that text into dynamic rate data in their CargoSphere system.
SUDS 2.0 advances are designed to create a new rate management paradigm. This innovation is expected to speed the processing of static carrier contracts and rate sheets, reducing grunt work, boosting cost and time savings, and improving productivity within logistics, beneficial cargo owners (BCOs) and carrier businesses. SUDS 2.0 now creates a case for reducing or eliminating outsourced services for the contract management function, and bringing it in house for maximum efficiency, control and savings.
“Carriers are amending rates faster than perhaps any time in recent history, creating pricing volatility and significant administrative work for the carriers themselves and downstream customers. With SUDS 2.0, we are reaching a significant milestone in the processing capability of SUDS and a new era of rate management in the industry,” said Neil Barni, president of CargoSphere.
