Panalpina launches industry-shaping customer portal 20 September 2017

Panalpina is intent on steering the logistics industry into the Digital Age by using the newest technologies available to create a truly innovative, end-to-end digital environment for its customers. The Company’s new customer portal not only addresses many of today’s most pressing needs but more importantly will shape and define tomorrow’s interactions and interfaces between customers and logistics service providers.

The 3PL recently reached a significant milestone in modernising the Company’s systems landscape by successfully rolling out a new state-of-the-art operational platform (SAP TM) in Germany, one of its key markets. Now, Panalpina is taking the next logical step in creating a seamless customer experience that will make managing global shipments faster and simpler.

In a first step, Panalpina has successfully piloted its new, fully automated online quotation and booking platform for ad hoc cargo with selected Air Freight customers. This new centralised digital platform provides customers with a fast, simple and reliable online interface that enables informed decision-making by giving access to easy and instantaneous quotation and booking of ad hoc shipments globally. Some of the first key customer benefits of the new platform are:

1. Speed: instant quotation thanks to automated rate calculation without human intervention
2. End-to-end solutions: rates cover door-to-door transactions including pre- and on-carriage
3. Ease: rates can be viewed and freight booked instantaneously with a few mouse-clicks and without the need to pick up a phone or write an email

Today, anyone can easily set up an appealing front-end tool for freight quotation or booking. The key question to ask is: What happens on the back end when a query is triggered? In Panalpina’s case, sophisticated algorithms immediately scan the industry’s most comprehensive online databases, without manual intervention, to calculate the best freight rates and options for customers.

The platform offers key features such as dynamic pricing, global coverage and online 24/7 accessibility. In today’s highly volatile market environment, the automated platform allows Panalpina to respond very quickly to customer inquiries by providing competitive rates as well as cargo capacity either through its Charter Network or partner carriers.

Panalpina will launch the platform in Q1, 2018, and thereafter extend this new-generation digital portal across its entire product portfolio and customer base.