Benefits explained

Odyssey enables carriers, agents and shippers to use the same application so information can be re-used which eliminates the need to re-key data avoiding unnecessary errors.

Odyssey automates activities at a lower cost than that they can be performed manually. By automating the mundane repeatable activities your valued staff are able to pay more attention to tasks and activities of higher importance. These factors enable you to do more with less.

Extend the reach of your software world-wide to include all your branch offices, agents and shippers.

Many carriers use key factors to differentiate their level of service from a competitor, Odyssey offers a number of key factors (e.g. shippers can easily manage their shipments online for free) that enable you to improve on your competitors service levels.

Through the automation of most activities and the monitoring of human based activities, tasks are more consistently completed within a specific service level.

Identify critical information at any point in time such as capacity available on a specific voyage, how many tenders are accepted or declined by shippers, how many booking requests are awaiting processing and much more.

Easily customise application behaviour to suit your business needs using business rules that enable you to respond quickly to changes in the market place.

Software as a Service introduces many benefits described here

 

Features explained

Quickly create, manage and share your sailing schedules online from which shippers can submit rate requests or make bookings direct.

Shippers can get immediate responses to rate requests.

The process whereby shippers submit tenders to multiple carriers and ultimately results in a contract with a nominated carrier is automated and all activities are performed online.

Shippers can create bookings from templates, selecting a voyage on the sailing schedule or on accepting a carriers response to a rate request.

Documentation such as booking lists, Shipping Instructions, Bills of Lading, Manifests, Freight Summary, Statement of Facts, Cargo Arrival Notice, Delivery Orders and more are created and managed online.

Through the document management system electronic documentation can be shared between all branches, agents and shippers.

Odyssey incorporates the full IMDG Code Dangerous Goods List compliant with Amendment 33-06. The data allows the user to easily and efficiently look up information relating to dangerous goods based on the UN number or proper shipping name and to retrieve information on packaging, stowage and segregation and any substance-specific properties and observations. The data is supplied by Exis Technologies, producers of Hazcheck System.

Carriers, agents and shippers can at anytime track shipments and containers to identify their current location and history of movements.

Electronically generate freight invoices, port and voyage disbursements, subscribe to the freight settlement system and monitor/track freight payments in real-time.Additional charges can be included on invoices such as carrier haulage charges for containers, bunker surcharges, container demurrage and more.

Carriers can manage their relationship with their shippers with full visibility of all interaction and communication and track sales activities and promotions.

Generate one-off, daily, weekly, monthly or annual reports containing a wide range of information from vessel itineraries to rate requests or booking trends and more.

Companies who subscribe to Odyssey perform their own user administration where users are added to groups to which roles are assigned. Roles implement a security layer across functions and activities; this means that you have full control of which employees in your organisation or your agents’ organisation have access to specific tasks.

Use the voyage calculator to plan your vessels itinerary together with bunker costs and consumption.

Locus provides full integration capabilities with portals (such as INTTRA and OceanSchedules.com), customs or port authorities for submission of electronic manifest and container terminals.

Odyssey is pure Java, which means that it is interoperable with any operating system that can run a Java Virtual Machine including Microsoft Windows, Apple OS X, Unix and most Linux distributions.

Software as a Service (SaaS) explained

SaaS is a term where we deliver Odyssey via the Internet so you can subscribe to it as a service, rather than installing it on your Servers. Locus has developed Odyssey as a web-based application, which is hosted and operated by Locus for use over the Internet by members of the shipping industry. Users don’t buy the software but pay for what they use. Effectively it is a model where a service subscriber is interested in the end result rather than how the end result was achieved. SaaS has matured from earlier versions such as Application Service Provider (ASP) and On-Demand. ASP was merely the management of servers at a time where technology trends led to client-server based applications with html front-ends. SaaS applications are differentiated from older ASP style applications since they are developed specifically to leverage web technologies making them web-based.

Benefits of SaaS

• Focus on core business. When subscribing to a software service, organisations are able to focus on their core business activity with minimal distraction from the underlying complications and technicalities of information technology.
• Change CAPEX to OPEX. To develop and implement software requires considerable capital investment upfront with the intention of getting a return on the investment at some point. By subscribing to a service an organisation does not need any upfront capital investment and the subscription fees become an operational expenditure.
• No depreciation. SaaS includes the provisioning of the hardware to run the application so there is no requirement for a service subscriber to purchase equipment to run the software. This means that there is no depreciation for the subscriber.
• No cost of ownership. The subscriber can appreciate the business benefits of technology without the cost of ownership of a traditional solution.
• No over or under capitalisation. Acquiring a software product is a major investment. It is difficult for organisations to clearly identify exactly what they need initially never mind what they need in 3 or 4 years time and there is a risk that within a couple of years the software product & hardware platform they have choosen is either inadequate (under capitalisation) or the software product & hardware platform is in excess of what the organisation require (over capitalisation). Either way the organisation will not experience the full benefit of the exercise and the return on investment will not be maximized.
• Costs fluctuate relative to income. When subscribing to a service based pay-as-you-go model the service fee is aligned with usage. Therefore as usage of the services increase during the busier months (i.e. when revenue is higher), so does the subscription fee and as usage drops in the quieter months when revenue is down the subscription fee reduces proportionately.
• Quick time to market. The Locus platform is pre-deployed so when an organisation subscribes to a service there is no need to deploy any software saving considerable time and money.
• Quickly realize cost savings. As a result of the quick time to market, alignment with costs to income and no risk of over capitalisation, organisations can realize cost savings of BPM much sooner than the conventional methods.
• No licensing headaches. Most organisations have experienced the pain of managing software licenses. With subscription services the organisation does not actually purchase or own any software so therefore there is no need to manage the licenses and no headaches to go with it.
• Reduced training budget. Locus provides the skills and knowledge to develop, implement and support solutions, which eliminates the requirement for subscribers to train staff or hire new staff with the right skills required.