Global trade continues to expand, with the World Trade Organization (WTO) projecting a 2.7% increase in goods trade for 2024, slightly up from the 2.6% forecasted earlier. This growth highlights the critical role of intermodal transportation, an intricate network of ships, trains, and trucks, in facilitating the easy movement of goods across borders.
Tracking intermodal containers as they transition between these modes presents both opportunities and challenges for businesses. Solutions like Vizion’s real-time container tracking provide greater visibility, helping companies improve efficiency, reduce delays, and enhance customer satisfaction.
These tools streamline operations and reduce manual tracking by automating data collection and delivering accurate shipment updates. At the same time, implementing such solutions comes with difficulties, from technological integration to cost concerns.
What is Intermodal Container Tracking?
Intermodal container tracking is the process of monitoring shipping containers as they move across multiple transportation modes, including ships, trains, and trucks. It provides visibility at key transition points, like transshipment ports, destination terminals, and inland rail movements.
Traditional tracking methods depend on carrier updates, which often suffer from delays, inconsistencies, and missing data. Vizion enhances this process by delivering automated, structured, real-time tracking information, ensuring accurate visibility across ocean and rail transport.
Benefits of Intermodal Tracking
As goods move across different transportation modes, tracking their journey becomes essential for maintaining efficiency and reliability in global supply chains. Intermodal container tracking plays a critical role in minimizing disruptions, improving operational workflows, and enhancing customer confidence. Here’s why it matters:
- Greater Supply Chain Visibility
Uncertainty in shipment status can lead to costly delays and inefficiencies. Real-time tracking provides end-to-end visibility, allowing businesses to monitor container movements from the port of origin to the final inland destination.
With real-time structured data from solutions like Vizion, companies can make informed decisions and optimize logistics planning.
- Reduces Manual Workload
Traditional tracking methods often involve manual updates, frequent follow-ups, and reliance on multiple carriers for status reports. This process is not only time-consuming but also prone to errors.
- Cost Savings
Delays in container movements can result in detention and demurrage fees, adding unnecessary expenses to shipping operations. With timely updates on container status, businesses can proactively manage pickups and returns, reducing storage-related penalties.
By integrating Vizion’s real-time container tracking capabilities, companies can avoid costly demurrage and detention charges by ensuring shipments are handled efficiently.
- Better Customer Satisfaction
Accurate estimated time of arrival (ETA) updates enable proactive communication with customers and partners. Delays and unexpected changes in transit can disrupt supply chain schedules, but with real-time insights, businesses can adjust logistics plans accordingly.
Top 4 Challenges in Intermodal Container Tracking (with Solutions)
Tracking intermodal shipments has several hurdles that can lead to inefficiencies, increased costs, and operational disruptions. From fragmented data to system integration issues, these challenges make it difficult for businesses to maintain real-time visibility. Vizion addresses these problems by providing structured and reliable tracking data, ensuring a smoother logistics process.
1. Data Fragmentation
Intermodal transportation involves multiple carriers, each using different tracking systems. This lack of uniformity makes it difficult for businesses to consolidate tracking information, leading to delays and blind spots in the supply chain. Without a centralized data source, companies must manually gather and interpret updates, increasing the risk of errors.
Vizion’s Solution:
Vizion standardizes data from various sources, ensuring clarity and consistency. By aggregating information from ocean and rail carriers into a unified, structured format, Vizion eliminates the need for manual reconciliation. This enables businesses to access complete, up-to-date tracking details without relying on inconsistent carrier updates.
2. Inconsistent Data Quality
Many tracking updates are incomplete, outdated, or inaccurate. Missing timestamps, incorrect location data, and delayed status changes make it difficult for logistics teams to plan effectively. Poor data quality can lead to unexpected delays, increased detention and demurrage fees, and frustrated customers.
Vizion’s Solution:
Vizion enhances tracking accuracy with robust data validation processes. By filtering out unreliable or duplicate entries and cross-referencing multiple sources, Vizion ensures that businesses receive high-quality, real-time tracking updates. This allows for better planning, proactive issue resolution, and improved decision-making.
3. Lack of Standardization
Tracking data is often delivered in multiple formats, depending on the carrier or transportation mode. This inconsistency makes it challenging to integrate information into logistics systems and can cause confusion when analyzing shipment progress.
Vizion’s Solution:
Vizion delivers structured, ready-to-use tracking data that can be easily integrated into any workflow. By converting diverse data formats into a standardized structure, Vizion simplifies accessing, interpreting, and utilizing tracking information, enabling easy logistics management.
4. Integration with Existing Systems
Many companies rely on logistics software like TMS (Transportation Management Systems) and ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) tools to manage supply chain operations. However, integrating tracking data from multiple carriers into these systems can be complex, requiring costly and time-consuming IT efforts.
Vizion’s Solution:
Vizion’s API-based solutions are designed for easy integration into any ERP, TMS, or any other logistics platform. By providing a standardized and automated tracking feed, Vizion eliminates compatibility issues and streamlines data ingestion. This ensures businesses can incorporate real-time shipment updates directly into their workflows, improving operational efficiency and reducing the reliance on manual tracking efforts.
Conclusion
Intermodal container tracking plays a crucial role in improving logistics efficiency, reducing costs, and ensuring supply chain reliability. While challenges like fragmented data, inconsistent updates, and system integration issues can create roadblocks, the right technology can transform how businesses manage their shipments.
Vizion’s automated, real-time tracking solutions help bridge these gaps by delivering structured, reliable data that integrates easily into existing workflows. With greater visibility and accurate insights, companies can make proactive decisions, minimize disruptions, and enhance customer satisfaction.
- Real-Time Container Tracking: Gain access to the most complete, standardized, and detailed container tracking events via API or user interface with real-time container tracking data.
- Logistics Performance Hub: Access a comprehensive suite of global logistics datasets, including Port Performance, Port Activity, and Port Pairs, to analyze shipping trends, port throughput, container dwell times, and real-time port activity, enabling smarter decision-making about containerized freight movements.
- TradeView: Monitor the live flow of any company's shipments 30 to 90 days before arrival at the destination and analyze trends across 10 years of historical supplier, product, and logistics movement data. With 900 million shipment records, 140+ attributes per shipment, coverage spanning 190 countries, and comprehensive HS code data, TradeView empowers data-driven decisions that optimize global trade management.
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