WorldCity Business Magazine

(6-a) Who's Here Profiles: INTTRA - digital containers

by Dan Weil

E-commerce company INTTRA links customers and shipping lines, processing hundreds of thousands of containers and making international trade easy

The explosion of world trade has been very good to INTTRA, a Parsippany, NJ-based company that provides automated systems for ocean carriers and exporters to book containers and track orders.

INTTRA the companys name stems from a combination of international and trade has seen the number of container orders it handles approximately double each year since it started the system in 2001 to more than 200,000 a week.

INTTRA has just moved its Miami-area office from Pembroke Pines to Miramar to accommodate an increase in staff that is handling the companys North and Latin American operations. INTTRA has 25 workers in Miramar, up from about 19 just six months ago. Overall, the company has about 230 workers in 12 offices around the globe. It does business in more than 100 countries.

INTTRA is owned by six major shipping companies, who started the venture in 2000 to make their business more efficient. The owners are Maersk Line, Hamburg Sud, Hapag-Lloyd, Mediterranean Shipping Co. (MSC), CMA CGM and United Arab Shipping Co. (UASC).

The use of INTTRAs automated system represents a tremendous cost saving for both exporters and shipping lines, says Jim Freeman, managing director of the companys Americas Region. Were taking all the traditional manual procedures and putting that into an electronic format, he said.
Even today, a lot of companies are spending time and money on faxing and couriers. An electronic format creates more efficiency and speed and lends itself to less errors.

INTTRA offers clients three different ways to interact with its system. First, customers can use its web portal. Second, INTTRA uses electronic data interchange (EDI) so that it can synchronize with companies own data systems. Some of the larger companies have their own internal systems and dont want to go to the internet, Freeman said.

And for companies in countries with weak or few internet connections, INTTRA has an off-line desk-top tool, software that users load on to their computers, giving them the same capabilities they would have on INTTRAs web site, except that information is sent back and forth via e-mail.

Obviously the systems are working. INTTRA is processing more than $12 billion of container orders per year, which represents about 10 percent of worldwide container shipments.

The huge expansion of INTTRAs business stems from the desire of its customers to sharpen their competitive edge, Freeman says. Time is of the essence. Shippers and exporters need to streamline as many processes as possible. Logistics is turning out to be a big part of many large companies. To help them manage and reduce costs, e-commerce is the way to go.

Of course soaring global trade also has benefited INTTRA. Were susceptible to expansion and slowdown in the global market, Freeman said. But a slowdown would make e-commerce more important, because competition would increase and cost would become an issue.

INTTRAs fastest growing markets are China, Brazil, and India, mirroring the experience of many other companies. Latin America represents a huge success for INTTRA, Freeman said. The companys business there has soared more than 200 percent in the last 12 months, led by Brazil,
Chile and Argentina.

I dont know whats driving it, but they have a strong desire to be competitive and see e-commerce as a way to level the playing field, Freeman said.

For the Americas region as a whole (North and Latin America), INTTRA is originating orders for about 50,000 containers a week, nearly double last years pace of 26,000 per week. Combining the regions into one, weve put a lot of focus on the North American market. Everyone views it
as an import market, but its an export market too, and thats what we cater to, Freeman said.

The WorldCity Who’s Here database contains information on more than 1,200 multinatinal companies with a presence in South Florida. In these pages, we take a look at some of the most recent entries.