Origin Consolidation
Century efficiently consolidates merchandise from multiple vendors to maximize the load factors in marine containers. Cargo is loaded into the containers in accordance with your detailed instructions and delivered to the nominated carrier. For vendor loaded containers, Century coordinates booking and delivery with the vendor and the carrier.
Physical freight consolidation nets savings in both ocean and destination transportation costs. Consolidated merchandise moves in intact CY containers. You benefit from the carrier’s economical box rates and surcharges. Expensive CFS delivery and LCL ocean freight charges are minimized, yielding lower ocean freight costs per SKU.
P.O. Monitoring
Via Open P.O. and P.O. Cancel Date reports, Century monitors cargo booking and receiving against your order dates and quantities. Century can also check with your vendors for production status at set intervals before the P.O. ship date, i.e. 14 days out, 7 days out, etc. We e-mail you with daily updates on P.O. status. Century and your company work together to pre-program exception criteria so VMS® automatically alerts our staff and yours of booking discrepancies that require further follow-up. Purchase Order monitoring facilitates offshore inventory management and enables our customers to assess vendor performance.
Pre-Shipping Advice Management
Upon receipt of booking orders from the vendors, Century enters cargo details into VMS® and transmits a Pre-Shipping Advice to your staff for approval. Pre-Shipping Advices can be sent via the Internet, e-mail or facsimile. After you confirm the shipment, Century coordinates booking and delivery to the carrier. Any changes in merchandise quantities or shipment status before the vessel sailing are keyed into VMS® and the Pre-Ship Advice is reissued for your review and approval.
Shipping Advice & Container Load Planning
After vessel departure, Century updates its systems with containers numbers, seal numbers, bill of lading (B/L) numbers, stow positions and freight charges in order to generate the Shipping Advice and Container Load Plans. Century transmits this data to you within three business days of the vessel sailing. You may also access the information through the VMS®, our Internet based tracking system.
Forwarder’s Cargo Receipt Management
In exchange for the merchandise and commercial documents, Century releases a Forwarder’s Cargo Receipt (FCR) to your vendor. The FCR takes the place of the carrier’s Bill of Lading as the negotiable document in a Letter of Credit or open account transaction. Century retains the original FCR until the vendor has complied with the documentation and quality control standards established by your company. All Century offices use your operating procedures as a stringent check-list to ensure vendors have tendered complete documentation prior to FCR release.
Documentation Management
The standard operating procedures we customize for your account will list all required documents, where documents must be sent and how many sets each recipient must receive.
Century can convey documents to you and your broker through several methods, whichever works best for your company –
- Attaching scanned documents to e-mail
- EDI
- Hard copies via air courier
For hard copy mailings, you can look up the courier company, tracking number and send date in VMS®, which is accessible 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Our future goal is to convey all documents electronically, and we plan to achieve this through an E-Document module in VMS®. The E-Document Solution (EDS) is an application that allows for the creation of web-based forms that can capture or display information. EDS supports the creation of forms with no programming, and these forms can use data received via EDI, XML or any other defined system interface. The user forms can include validation, drop down lists, check boxes, logos and customer specific formatting. EDS gives Century the flexibility to move both paper forms and the data contained therein, which will also result in a database that can be used for reporting queries.
Vendor Management
Vendor management is an integral part of Century's service and a big part of what separates us from the average freight forwarder. Our interaction with our customers' vendors is tailor-made based on each customer's objectives and requirements. For example, we have implemented some of the following vendor-focused programs:
- Configuration/load building software to maximize container cube utilization on vendor loads.
- Enforcement of "reefer as dry" container usage.
- Roll-out of new packaging requirements.
- Seasonal commodity storage programs.
- Container moisture content inspection programs - to avoid the effect of condensation on furniture.
- Development of a supplier on-line program (for on-line booking, P.O.’s, forecasts and compliance).
All of these programs have required either vendor training seminars or one-on-one remote instruction to vendors. This type of customized Vendor Management is a fundamental part of Century's service offering. The service is ongoing, continuously evolving and carries no additional cost.