By George Lauriat, Editor-in-Chief, AJOTINTTRA’s Rob Haney is on a global mission. Haney, INTTRA’s senior director of NVOCC product line, is vested with the responsibility of introducing NVOs to the Parsippany, NJ-based e-commerce platform. Haney, who was [at the time of the interview] speaking from Shenzhen, a city north of Hong Kong, with the AJOT, explained that the NVO initiative is a “market outreach” to the NVOs for the portal. To understand the “outreach” to the NVOs, it is important to be familiar with the background of the evolution of INTTRA as a portal itself. INTTRA started primarily as a link or portal between steamship lines and the movers of freight - both forwarders and BCOs (Beneficial Cargo Owners), the new buzzword for the real shippers. INTTRA rapidly evolved into a portal that seamlessly connected thirty major ocean carriers with freight. The basic concept was to provide an all purpose e-platform to enable movers of ocean freight to streamline and standardize their shipping processes through web-based systems and EDI. The network is designed to handle both FCL and LCL freight. It was a very successful initiative, and now from some 20,000 locations, over 400,000 boxes cross the platform weekly, representing 12% of the global box trade. Branding in an e-commerce environment Last year, INTTRA began to expand beyond the original conception and bring in more forwarders and NVOs. However, selling to the global NVO market is radically different than pulling more shippers into the platform. “We had to modify our [INTTRA’s] pitch,” Haney related. “We had to create a market awareness,” that reaches beyond systems and platforms. Part of selling to NVOs was knowing what not to sell. As Haney explained many NVOs already had built their own very successful portals for their shipper customers. It was important from the onset not to be selling against what the NVOs already were doing very well. INTTRA learned how to “compliment” their existing systems. “We didn’t want to seem like we were going to cannibalize their [NVOs] existing systems,” Haney said. Back in December, an Antwerp-based NVO, ECU Line, joined INTTRA after a test program. The test program was designed to, in real world terms, see if ECU Line’s own EDI and Web tools were compatible and complimentary. It was an important step because INTTRA’s NVO e-commerce platform would have to co-exist with numerous other e-documentation channels that each NVO already had established - often at great cost - and certainly wouldn’t want to abandon anytime soon. Haney emphasized, “We [INTTRA] are not selling systems but selling network.” INTTRA’s e-platform system saves a mid-sized forwarder or NVO a great deal of time and money and offers them the ability to scale their efforts to large shippers, who often have a significant global footprint. Additionally, the system enables small or mid-sized NVOs or forwarders to apply metrics to their business that would have been out of reach just a short time ago. The “network” is many things. Because the platform began with shippers and ocean carriers, it has a lot to offer NVOs, who buy ocean carrier slots and sell them to forwarders and shippers. One aspect important to an NVO or a forwarder is that by working with INTTRA, the company is immediately part of a globally recognized organization. Further, it is an organization that is expanding. For this reason there is a “marketing” quality to joining the platform. And the network is truly growing. In March, INTTRA added a major NVO to the network when Econocaribe Consolidators agreed to come on board. Brad Broder, vice president at Econocaribe Consolidators, said of the collaboration, “The INTTRA network provides us with a world-class e-commerce solution, which will help us and our customers save time and money, and enables both our customers and Econocaribe to grow.” Better Mouse Trap The neutrality of INTTRA is also very important to the branding process. INTTRA offers a “white