Reporter Xu Miaomiao

How does shipping big data change the future

Reporter Xu Miaomiao

Recently, Alibaba together with Maersk Line launched "cabin treasure". COSCO Shipping Group reached a consensus with Alibaba on the launch of “Just One Touch”, a comprehensive foreign trade online service platform for COSCO shipping container. The cooperation between MSC and Alibaba, as well as the partnership between the Maersk Group and IBM mean the successful completion of the first block chain test. This series of events show clearly that the container liner industry is the most active area for shipping and “Internet plus” and “Big Data” to “go hand in hand”. What is the reason behind that?

Pro. Xu Kai, the director of the big data laboratory of Shanghai international shipping institute believed that the Internet of Things and E-business have the same characteristics that are automation and standardization, container is the ref l ection of the essence of standardization in the shipping industry. It can be seen clearly that the cooperation between MAERSK and MSC that there have been many small-size cargo owners on the platform of Alibaba. Though they are dispersed, the volume of cargo is huge when they are grouped together.

Liu Qianwen, the vice president of ELANE believed that so far, we only see the miniature of big data, which is far from the real sense big data.

How far is the arrival of the shipping big data era from us? Xu Kai believes that currently the shipping data of China has a poor basic condition. Judging from the current situation, fi rstly, the “Internet +” has already been implemented but big data era has not come yet. Secondly, at present, the communication among all information systems, such as fi nancial systems, personnel systems and customer management systems is not smooth. Thirdly, the shipping companies lack channels and means to access to external information and without which those companies are not able to understand and analyze the market situation. Fourthly, the shipping companies are not very capable in terms of commercial intelligence and producing automatically the intelligence report.

Whether the time of shipping big data could come early depends on the following aspects: Firstly, the data of big data is derived from some startup industries or enterprises, shipping enterprises can not copy experience from other industry simply if they want to do big data. Secondly, in the aspect of shipping enterprises’ management, both the executive and operational level of enterprises don’t have a clear awareness of what big data is, and what will be brought for the enterprise? Thirdly, how to ensure the quality of big data. Lastly, whether the related parties of the industry chain have the spirit of information sharing? Since it's diff i cult if one party acts alone.