Today, Zepol launched a new enhancement for all TradeIQ Professional and Enterprise users that allows them to create and download over 8 million different types of aggregate reports. This upgrade provides our users with the most advanced reporting capabilities for aggregate reports or roll ups.

We created this reporting upgrade after we looked at the alternative of creating a host of aggregate standardized reports. However, we knew we could never keep up with the number of unique reports that our customers would have requested. In addition, we have a philosophy to provide our users with as much choice and information as possible. Hence, we decided to create an engine that can create up to 8 million different aggregate reports that allows users to define the aggregate reports they need.

This enhancement is all about answering questions for our users, which the stakeholders in their companies ask them on a daily basis that only trade data can answer. Instead of sifting through thousands of Bill of Lading records, we have made it possible to report on these elements easily across large spans of time.

As part of this enhancement, we have created a video, shown below, to illustrate the enhancement to our users:



Below are samples of several reports that can be created from our new ‘Customize Grid Report’ functionality:

• Trade Lane Analysis for Consignees in a State
• Market Share Analysis for a Product
• Analysis of Vessels and Associated Carriers in a Trade Lane

Zepol is very proud of this enhancement and would like to celebrate by providing free trials to readers of our blog and any company interested in Zepol’s trade data tools. Click here to sign up for your free trial.

Like the customers they service, transportation service providers also utilize trade data to perform competitive analysis at both an aggregate and detailed level. In a business as competitive as transportation services, any advantage is important, but concrete information received from trade data allows users to deliver results from their competitive intelligence efforts. Below I describe two ways that some of Zepol’s 3PL, NVO, and Carrier subscribers are using trade data to derive business intelligence.

First, at the detailed level, individual sales representatives and managers with access to trade information have a distinct advantage. In practice, this requires researching accounts before making sales calls to understand all the details about a company’s import activity. One of the key elements that should be examined at this time is who the importer’s current transportation service providers are.

One of the ways that this information appears in the trade data is as a notify party on the manifest. It will often show what transportation service provider a company is using, but this is not required. The other element seen in the data for a shipper is the SCAC (Standard Carrier Alpha Code) shown in the Carrier field. This shows which company transmitted the manifest to the Automated Manifest System. Most of the time, this will be a NVOCC or Steamship Line, but will provide insights into what competitors an account executive is up against.

Secondly, at the aggregate level, executives and marketing personnel within 3PLs, NVOs, and Carriers will look at the rolled up information to make strategic decisions. They will analyze the market shares for specific parts of the market. For example, how market share growth trends for specific trade lanes or for all of the accounts in a geographic region helps leaders to adjust where they target their marketing and sales. Other companies will view how well they compete for a specific Line or even on the vessels operated by a Carrier.

While aggregate and detailed level competitive intelligence can significantly improve sales conversion rates and effectiveness of strategic decisions, it is important to note that the level of user penetration in your organization must be vast to feel the full affect. Many companies will attempt to save money by limiting the number of users in their company, but this only reduces the total effectiveness of your intelligence program and diminishes total ROI.

Today is St. Patrick's Day, so we celebrate with an Irish themed look at trade from one of our products, TradeView.

Below is a graph showing the trend of imports for the last 13 months of data for Ireland from the U.S. Census Bureau:



Next, we examine the top 5 U.S. Customs district for both imports and exports:

Finally, the top products that are imported to and exported from by NAICS code:

*Civilian Aircrafts are removed from the above. These exports represent a large portion of shipments from the U.S. Customs district of Seattle, WA.

The U.S. Census Bureau released their Merchandise Trade data numbers on March 10th for January 2010. The Merchandise Trade balance has declined by 7.0% from December to return to levels last seen in August 2009. Both imports and exports fell by about 6.6%, ending a two month trend of growth. However, in comparison to 2009, all numbers are heading in a positive direction; exports are up by 18.3%, imports by 11.3%, and the Merchandise Trade balance is down by 1.0%.

Below is an in-depth breakdown of the U.S. Census Merchandise Trade data released last week. This month we have highlighted 5 interesting items that we found while looking at December's data; here are the highlights:

1. New York Falling in Love with Coffee
2. Asia's Economy Recovering More Quickly than Europe's
3. Housing Market Still Down
4. Haiti to Grow Textile Industry
5. National Export Initiative Projections
   

Click here for Zepol's U.S. Census Merchandise Trade Data Update for January 2010