The new normal for shipping and the wider logistics business, at least for 2016, is characterised by increasing capacity, declining demand, wafer-thin margins, and hunkering down until the storm has passed. Any suggestion that investment should be made in new technology as an aid to strategic thinking is firmly put back in its box. Yet that's precisely what businesses should be doing, says Inna Kuznet-sova, head of marketplace business at INTTRA, the online platform for booking container shipments. A small budgetary shortfall can usually be solved through trimming costs, but a massive hole demands a completely new way of thinking. Manual systems are no match for electronic solutions: standardisation and simplification are ways to reduce time and effort. So what's holding back the inevitable blossoming of e-systems?
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