Web-based shipping portal CargoSmart™ , signed a significant three-year agreement with Hewlett-Packard .CargoSmart™ will outsource its data hosting to Hewlett-Packard who will act as a neutral party to ensure that CargoSmart’s multiple-carrier customer data is kept completely proprietary. The Hewlett-Packard service, which will be hosted primarily out of Hong Kong, will be deployed in just several weeks. These support services will also benefit CargoSmart’s growing current customer base of over 400 companies who log onto CargoSmart™on the average of over 8,000 times per month.
Continuing with its long-term strategy and business model, CargoSmart™is leveraging HP’s expertise and proven track record to deliver a neutral hosting environment. CargoSmart™customers and participating carriers will benefit from Hewlett-Packard’s outsourcing services that include: a 24x7 multilingual Help Desk, Production Services, Technical Services, Application Support, Production Control and Facility Management.
"We are delighted that CargoSmart™has chosen HP as their outsourcing partner," said Kris Chan, Director of Marketing at Hewlett-Packard Hong Kong. "HP has a wealth of experience in providing outsourced Internet Data Center and value-added e-services in multi-vendor environment. TheCargoSmart™portal serves a wide range of communities. It is critical that this is hosted in a highly secure environment by professionals that can offer one of the best outsourced services."
Recognizing the opportunity to reduce communication costs and provide value-added customer service, participating carriers today can leverage the power of CargoSmart’s product to provide: comprehensive real-time shipment details, event driven notification and a sophisticated profiling tool, the Relationship Manager function for managing how and when shipment information is shared with trade partners. CargoSmart™ also allows users to leverage an interactive sailing schedule and track cargo movement twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.
“This announcement helps to support our neutral position that we are open to all carriers joining CargoSmart™ at anytime,” said Joseph O’Brien, Director of Marketing for CargoSmart™. “We look forward to leveraging this partnership with HP to deliver the best in technology and services to our customers.”
Delivering upon it’s commitment to consistently raise the bar in providing solutions that meet the shipping industry’s needs and anticipating a rise in its customer base to climb to 1,000 users by the end of the year, CargoSmart™ will soon be announcing additional services in the areas of "real time" online booking, rate procurement and bill of lading processing.
CargoSmart™ was designed with customer and carrier efficiency in mind and is an open software platform that provides customers the ability to manage their shipments with multiple carriers online and empowers them to share information with their shipping associates. CargoSmart™ was launched on October 11, 2000 and has quickly become the customer-preferred choice, adopted by over 400 customers who are actively using the portal on a daily basis to effectively manage their logistics needs.
Hewlett-Packard Company -- a leading global provider of computing and imaging solutions and services -- is focused on making technology and its benefits accessible to individuals and businesses through simple appliances, useful e-services and solutions for an Internet infrastructure that’s always on.
HP had total revenue from continuing operations of US$48.8 billion in its 2000 fiscal year. Information about HP and its products can be found on the World Wide Web at www.hp.com.
For more information about CargoSmart™, please visit www.cargosmart.com
