ITS to offer first-of-its-kind predictive visibility and automated appointments within the eModal.com portal to accelerate landside cargo planning and velocity for shippers, truckers and all port stakeholders Long Beach - To help increase cargo velocity and efficiency for its customers shipping cargo through the Port of Long Beach, International Transportation Service, Inc. (ITS) and Advent Intermodal Solutions, LLC. are partnering to expand Advent’s eModal™ community portal to enable predictive visibility as to exactly when import cargo becomes available for pickup. Building upon the widespread adoption of eModal as the largest port community platform in North America, this first-of-its-kind innovation will provide additional insight to help further streamline the operational planning of cargo flow through the supply chain. The solution will include two key capabilities to drive efficiency for ITS customers and their truckers.  Rather than just informing a dispatcher or trucker as to a future availability date/time, the new function will also fundamentally change the PreGate and Appointment processes in eModal by enabling the user to indicate their desire to either request an appointment slot or complete a pre-arrival notification automatically, negating the need to return to the portal to make an appointment after an availability message is received.  It’s expected this should save the user up to 10 minutes per import container.  The larger time savings, however, lies in the ability to automatically secure a preferred pickup appointment - either a first available slot or an exact date/time. The project, slated for completion in November, requires ITS to make minimal communication changes inside its terminal operating system (TOS) to enable the exchange of additional information with eModal™ . "ITS analyzed how information on cargo availability was collected today between our shippers and their drayage partners and found a big opportunity to innovate.  With nearly all terminals in the Port already using eModal™ to share container availability and make appointments, we felt it was the obvious place to share data and collaborate," said Sean Lindsay, COO, ITS.  “By knowing an expected availability window from the TOS, we can now make the associated appointment in one step.  This is a great example of our further digitizing an already efficient process to save time and simply get cargo moving faster by eliminating unnecessary or repetitive steps in our appointment process,” said Advent’s CEO, Parvez Mansuri. “We feel it’s a powerful example of continued innovation in eModal that will benefit the terminal operator, trucker and BCO alike”.