Sean Pyott

Freight & Trading Weekly Special Feature

December 1999

Eikos to launch sophisticated Internet system

THE LAST 12 to 18 months has seen the integration of sophisticated insurance mechanisms into the freight operator’s product line, said Sean Pyott, of Eikos Risk Applications. The company provides insurance facility development for the freight industry that involves the marketing by the freight operator of cargo protection insurance to their clients.

To manage these products and to pass on the most beneficial insurance rates to the operator’s clients, comprehensive and accurate shipment and loss information was required on a regular basis. This information was derived from more than one source and integrating the information reliably was a challenge that was difficult to overcome, he said.

One of the real advantages of an insurance and risk management service provider to the freight operator was the ability of the service provider to translate transactional operational information into analytical information, said Pyott.

Through the use of statistical techniques applied to the data warehouse, operator-specific information could be compared to industry benchmarks.

Traditional transportation logistics can be enhanced through the introduction of risk analysis and the identification of cost of risk in all its facets.

Eikos Risk Applications faces the challenges of extracting this risk-related information from the freight operators that subscribe to its products.

Many of the operators have operational systems, said Pyott, that have been around for many years and have served the operator well during this time.

However, getting into these systems to extract meaningful transactional and management information is a problem. Also, integrating with these systems is a challenge.

"In the freight industry we are seeing a trend to provide customer-focused information in real time. Many operators face the problem that their legacy systems are not able to provide this information, let alone provide real time access by their clients to this information. We are seeing a rapid move to replace the legacy operational systems with a modern information processing system on software and database platforms that allow for this access to information in a secure and managed environment," he said.

"With the rapid growth in usage of the Internet and the ability for modern software systems to seamlessly integrate using this technology as a vehicle, we are seeing the demise of traditional EDI techniques that were costly and came with a high overhead. Access to information, requests and tracking can take place through a far friendlier interface over the Web.

Integration to large customers and service providers is now far easier than in the past.

Operators that are recognising this trend are taking the gap.

"Unfortunately the costly exercise of upgrading legacy environments often has to precede this," he said.

In the insurance arena, freight operators were outsourcing the management of their insurance products to the likes of Eikos.

"Our challenge is to make the outsource as seamless as possible to the freight operator and to their customer. This is being achieved through the use of technology. Eikos is in the process of bedding down a sophisticated Internet enabled proprietary work flow and documentation management system that will allow seamless integration into its backend processes.

"In order to support an international client base, Eikos is gearing towards 24-hour processing with rapid turnaround. This means effective use of reliable technology – not only to provide for internal processing but to provide real time process tracking and seamless integration into operator’s systems and the systems of their clients."

This article is reproduced with the permission of the publisher.