INTTRA�s business leaders include (left to right) CEO Ken Bloom, CFO William Jennings and General Council Eric Winston.

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Imagine you’re a traffic cop in a large city. Now imagine that you’re responsible for directing 10 percent of the city’s traffic all by yourself. On top of that, you have to watch multiple intersections in different parts of the city at all times. This would give you some idea of the situation in which Internet shipping portal company INTTRA finds itself every day. But although a traffic cop is armed with little more than a whistle, INTTRA is equipped with state-of-the-art data management and a technology infrastructure built for growth.

The company’s origins are unusual, CEO Ken Bloom admits, but he adds that INTTRA, backed by six of the world’s leading ocean carriers was created to improve the efficiency of the entire industry. “You may not expect these large multibillion-dollar companies to fund an Internet start-up,” Bloom says. “We were able to create a Web-based platform that enables shippers and forwarders to do business electronically with their carriers using a global set of standards.”

Senior Vice President of Commercial John DeBenedette says the company was sailing into uncharted territory immediately. “It was a big challenge,” he says. “We were doing something quite new. Most shippers were using single-EDI connections to their carriers or relying on manual processes. We had to innovate by designing business processes and products that were easy-to-use.”

INTTRA serves to streamline and modernize shipping by providing carriers and shippers with a standardized Web portal for all of the documents involved in a shipment. Bloom explains that moving a container from one end of the world to another requires a number of steps including selecting sailing schedules booking cargo, submitting shipping instructions and receiving bills of lading.

“Before INTTRA, this was done through phone or fax, perhaps through e-mail, but everyone did this in a different way,” Bloom says. “We have today a common set of protocols and data requirements and business processes.”

Six of the world’s largest ocean carriers pooled their resources to create Inttra in 2000: Maersk Line, CMA CGM, Hamburg Sud, Hapag-Lloyd, Mediterranean Shipping Co. and P&O Nedlloyd. Since then, INTTRA has 18 more carriers and has grown to operate in more than 85 countries with 13 offices worldwide.

“The company has been growing at the rate of about 6 percent per month for each of the last seven years,” Bloom says. The company’s Web portal has more than 11,000 companies, and Bloom says it originated more than $10 billion of export freight in 2007.

Consolidated Solutions
What has made INTTRA a success is the way it streamlines the process for shippers and carriers of all sizes, Bloom says.

The INTTRA platform eases document creation and formats everything into one simple-to-follow standardized format. This streamlines the process for both large and small companies on both sides of the shipping industry.

“From an exporter point of view, many companies actually use INTTRA as their business process system,” Bloom says, meaning that smaller companies use the platform in lieu of establishing and maintaining their own IT departments. “In many cases, the INTTRA e-commerce platform is their solution for connecting to their carriers and shipping partners.”

Shippers and carriers can also benefit by reducing the labor and paper necessary to process their transactions, Bloom continues. Before INTTRA, all the steps in the shipping process were handled by phone or fax, and each company had its own format for each document. “Through Inttra, you have a standardized stream of data that has all been validated through our standards,” Bloom says.