How Logistics Platforms Can Provide a Competitive Advantage

catkin GmbH is a developer of communication platforms and software for logistics and freight forwarding. One of the products is the Communication Platform 4.0, which connects various market participants from logistics, transport, and freight forwarding on a cloud basis. This approach bypasses the traditional software of the industry without the need to change hardware. The inter-company data exchange is simplified.

By Lisa Reitz

(Dortmund) For a long time, the media has been talking about the poorly digitized logistics sector. Paper-based processes, faxes, and phones still dominate the industry, despite the digital age. While the share of digitized freight forwarders and logistics companies is increasing, outdated and cumbersome technologies are often employed. Fixed software solutions offer inflexible, maintenance-heavy, and costly options that make establishing ad-hoc service relationships very difficult and can only partially support the processing of growing information. Innovative cloud-based logistics platforms circumvent the weaknesses of traditional logistics software and offer high flexibility, transparency, and processing capacities without the need to invest in proprietary hardware and data storage. Automated order capture and planning, and especially inter-company data exchange, are much easier to achieve through these platforms.

Platform as an Internal and External Communication Bridge

The company catkin has made it its mission to simplify the transition of logistics companies into digitized transport logistics. The eponymous customer and service provider portal catkin automatically communicates orders directly to the respective trucking company and provides confirmations or feedback to the respective operators and shipowners. Commissioned drivers can also communicate current status updates directly to the system via the catkin SmartApp – enabling real-time communication. While traditional logistics software solutions require lengthy and costly installations, catkin already has a strong order network that users can access quickly and from anywhere. Countless bilateral interfaces are replaced by a few catkin connectors, drastically reducing creation and maintenance efforts. The catkin platform is particularly well-suited for combined transport (KV), as it allows for the simple representation of numerous business relationships and the automated and transparent transmission of information to the involved partners.

Freight Forwarding Software: Cloud-Based Digitization in Container Logistics

While the catkin logistics platform focuses on mapping complex logistics networks, the cloud software cTRANS ensures smooth freight forwarding operations. cTRANS was developed with practitioners from the container world with the goal of enabling freight forwarders to make a cost-effective leap into digitized container logistics. The Software as a Service (SaaS) solution allows for automatic order capture, graphical order planning, an additional driver app, and numerous other services such as order, resource, or master data management, as well as additional modules for commercial processing or rail booking. This makes cTRANS a comprehensive software solution for container truckers that can be deployed quickly and without installation. A particular advantage lies in the automatic import of customer orders, as many shipowners and operators already process their orders through catkin. The licensing model also allows small and medium-sized enterprises to digitize their own processes – entry barriers are a thing of the past.

Staying Competitive

The logistics industry will increasingly digitize. Although traditional and inflexible software solutions that require time-consuming installations are still in use, companies see cloud technology as a future driver of digitization – as recently confirmed by the Cloud Monitor 2020 study. In the future, logistics will increasingly move towards a digitized industry where it will be essential to remain competitive, especially in the digital realm. With the catkin logistics platform and the cloud freight forwarding software cTRANS for container freight forwarding, as well as other solutions, catkin offers a coherent overall concept for the digitization of the logistics industry and the automation of its own order processes. Existing solutions and systems can be integrated relatively easily, as this was considered from the outset in the architecture of catkin.

Photo: © catkin

Lisa Reitz is a marketing employee at the Dortmund logistics software company catkin. She is particularly interested in the area of combined transport and enjoys focusing on the positive impacts of new innovative logistics technologies. In her articles, she mainly addresses questions about what logistics of the future might look like, what advantages digitization offers, and how companies can leverage these advantages. www.catkin.eu / www.catkin.eu/ctrans