PHILADELPHIA, March 17, 2004 —BDP International, a leading global logistics and transportation services company, has launched Global Rate Inquiry (RIQ), a new component in its BDPXpedion platform that enables customers and employees to retrieve real-time transportation rates over the Internet.
By entering subsets of shipping information, users can retrieve shipping options, including relevant transportation rates, service times and high-level routing information. As a result, BDP will be able to provide its customers, including shippers, agents and partners, access to a Web-based contract rate management service hosted and managed on their behalf by BDP. This capability will also serve to streamline BDP’s internal global transportation rate quoting process by enabling its worldwide employees to respond more quickly to customer requests for transportation quotes.
Developed in a collaboration with G-Log, the company’s technology platform partner, RIQ is the first BDP product launch of G-Log’s Global Command and Control (GC3) software and a key component in the company’s multi-year, multi-million-dollar BDPXpedion program to build a Web-based operating and IT infrastructure to globalize management of all international shipments.
“The expedited flow of visible transportation data, including rates, is essential to the effective control of supply chains for enterprises competing in global commerce,” said BDP President Richard J. Bolte, Jr. “It is also one of the service standards-of-entry for 3PLs that want to help customers grow today. RIQ and the array of international trade support tools we utilize require the kind of robust information and knowledge delivery platform which G-Log and BDP are building together, to meet our clients’ broader international logistics requirements.
“But technology in and of itself, though absolutely vital, is not enough to meet these requirements,” he explained. “It also takes experienced people employing best practices to deliver actionable solutions for our customers.”
RIQ will provide BDP customers global visibility of their contracted ocean carriers’ transportation rates. Accessible through the BDPCustomer.com portal, the first RIQ release provides options for port, rail-ramp, city and door rates for specific ocean carriers.
The RIQ program is being implemented in waves with functional enhancements developed, tested and released throughout 2004. Additional releases will include a preferred carriers capability and enhanced visibility of other charges associated with a shipment.
Other BDPXpedion applications include BDPTrax track-and-trace capabilities; BDPDox online international trade documentation; BDPData for service and carrier metrics and trend analytics; BDPCustomerCorrect for corrective action on service anomalies; Knowledge Central (K-Central) for relevant industry information and customer-specific content; operational vessel schedules and actual shipment status and Point-of-Delivery (POD) Web entries.
Next steps in the partnership between BDP and G-Log include the design and development of new transactional processes for order management, logistics planning, shipment execution and operational analytics.
“In partnership with BDP, we continue to develop leading-edge transportation and logistics solutions that allow customers to gain more value out of their supply chains,” said David Cairns, president and CEO, G-Log. “The flexibility and scalability of G-Log’s GC3 Web-native platform allow us to incorporate additional functionality with ease. We look forward to our next phase of innovation with BDP to provide its customers with a multi-modal, multi-leg, multi-enterprise system that integrates planning, optimization, execution, freight billing, and reporting into one seamless process.”For information contact:
Arnie Bornstein,
Director - Marketing and Corporate Communications,
BDP International, Inc..
Phone: 215-629-8493
fax: 215-629-8995
e-mail: abornstein@bdpnet.com
Media Contact:
Henry Raab
For BDP International
610-866-0611
hraab@swb.com
About BDP
BDP International is one of the leading privately held freight logistics / transportation management firms in the U.S. It operates freight logistics centers in more than 20 cities throughout North America and a network of subsidiaries, joint ventures and strategic partnerships in 140 countries. The company serves more than 4,000 customers worldwide. Clients include Bayer, Dow Chemical Company, DuPont, Heineken USA, Honeywell, Johnson & Johnson, Osram Sylvania, Revlon, Rohm & Haas, Trek Bicycle, Wacker, and others. BDP provides a range of services, including ocean, air and ground transportation; 4PL lead logistics process analysis, design and management; export freight forwarding; import customs brokerage and regulatory compliance; project logistics; warehousing/consolidation/distribution; and Internet shipping transaction/tracking management systems.
