Tuesday, 9 October 2007

EDI Helps Jurong Port Improve Supply Chain System

Today’s growing global supply chain had put tremendous pressure on sea ports and they are constantly looking for new ways to improve terminal and customer management. Improved business collaboration capabilities has helped Singapore's Jurong Port to be named as the “Best Asia Pacific Container Terminal”. Together with partner Ygl Convergence, two business collaboration messaging solutions - the Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) System and the Unattended PC EDI Gateway – were built on AT&T subsidiary Sterling Commerce's Gentran Integration Suite (GIS). This created an integrated, fluid messaging platform which enabled Jurong Port to align their system with their customers’, making the transaction of data and invoicing more efficient, while giving Jurong Port better visibility to information to identify potential issues in the supply chain.

“With over 7000 ships calling at our ports every year, it is integral for us to meet their needs in the most efficient manner on all fronts, including declaring cargo manifests and shipment booking records. GIS’ unified, single and cost-effective platform met all our EDI requirements to make transactions more efficient and secure,” commented Ho Kong Meng, manager for Information Technology at Jurong Port. “It also helped us streamline our EDI implementation process and focus on providing more value-added services to drive a more superior experience for our customers,” added Ho.

Prior to the implementation, EDI messaging was implemented using traditional Java programming. Maintaining and customizing EDI messaging for various customers with different EDI message versions requires effort and is a time-consuming process. Sterling Commerce GIS, which was implemented within seven weeks, provided Jurong Port with a stardardised, flexible integration platform from which it could interact with partners in real time and manage large electronic communities and sensitive data more securely.