If knowledge equals power, why do we sometimes feel powerless when staring at a pile of emails brimming with intelligence?
People who fix and trade vessels every day know it isn’t email volume that’s the problem–it’s filtering through them all to find what’s relevant right now.
The battle to separate the valuable wheat of market reports, trade offers and cargo lists from the useless chaff that doesn’t matter is constant. And there is often a lot of chaff. When daily emails get into the thousands, the wheat can be hard to find.
And when working in a volatile, competitive market, a few seconds can spell the difference between one rate and another, or your offer arriving just after a competitor’s does. “By the time one has pulled data from multiple systems and sources, copied it into a spreadsheet or just another third-party product, it may be too late at today’s pace of business,” agrees Jacques Goudchaux, CEO of shipping software provider AXSMarine.
The pressure of one missed email leading to a lost opportunity or unnecessary laytime is partly what inspired AXSMarine to build technology that makes chartering processes more efficient and less stressful. With shipping moving increasingly toward digitization, the need for tools that connect shipowners and cargo suppliers, charterers and brokers, and all stakeholders in between, was clear.
To be best-in-class at today’s pace means using software like AXSMarine to know the market better than the competition, and a smart email platform like SEDNA to act on that information faster than anyone else. Bridging these gaps at the common action space for all parties—the email inbox—is what inspired us to partner with AXSMarine on the AXSMarine integration for SEDNA.
The first challenge this integration addresses is organization. How do you tackle a daily barrage of emails when only a small minority are important, and the rest are taking up precious space and processing time? SEDNA’s unparalleled search means that finding messages in the system is always lightning fast. But how do you organize messages that are streaming in faster than you can sort them?
“Our previous email system was at the max of its capacities in processing 1,300 emails per day. We were storing and processing so many emails that by dragging and dropping an email from the inbox to the designated folder, it was taking up to five or 10 seconds per email.”
Viterra Chartering Manager
Enter: AXSReader, AXSMarine’s intelligent parsing engine that identifies and extracts key metadata from incoming messages. Instead of skimming through each message hoping you don’t miss relevant details, the AXSMarine integration for SEDNA will automatically instruct AXSReader to scan incoming messages for you. When it finds something important (like cargo and vessel information) AXSReader automatically tells SEDNA what tags to apply to the message. Now, your inbox is organizing itself with only the most relevant information–placing business-critical insights at your fingertips when you need it most.
A great integration is a two-way street, though. Just as AXSMarine can help you when using SEDNA, SEDNA also makes life easier when you’re using AXSMarine. Modules in AXSMarine like Cargobook and Ship List make it simple to find available cargo and vessels that meet your chosen search criteria.
And because of the integration with SEDNA, you can initiate a message with the party related to each vessel and cargo while using AXSMarine. One click of the SEDNA icon in AXSMarine gets the conversation going with whichever broker, charterer, operator, or owner that’s needed to move the deal forward.
What goes into that conversation can be time-consuming as well—especially if lengthy cargo or shipping lists are involved. Thankfully that same integration allows you to open a pre-populated message draft in SEDNA containing formatted lists. No more downloading a spreadsheet and awkwardly copying it into your draft. One click in AXSMarine and you’re looking at a list that’s ready for sending. In the process, you’re getting back time that would have been spent fussing with tables and deleting unnecessary downloads.
“Our partnership combines speed, reliability, and flexibility to optimize communication and ensure all data is interconnected.”
Bill Dobie, CEO at SEDNA
Speed. Reliability. Flexibility. Fixing ships takes all of these qualities—but the best in the industry look for how to be faster, more consistent, and have a better view of what’s happening in the market. By sorting through the wheat from the chaff in your inbox – and acting on critical information more easily – integrations are just one of the ways AXSMarine and SEDNA are helping the shipping industry harness the full power of the inbox.