CEVA brings ocean freight booking online with help from Kontainers

For Kontainers, the deal with CEVA is another notch in its belt of customer wins, which include Maersk and Toll Global Logistics. 

Parker declined to say what the CEVA contract is worth, but they are paying in the “seven figures” for a monthly subscription to Kontainers’ software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform.

The alternative is building an in-house software system. But the logistics industry has had fraught experiences with proprietary software implementations as has occurred at DP DHL Group. Parker said the cost and risk of a proprietary system is what’s attracting forwarders to a SaaS platform 

In-house software systems are “just not at a competitive price point,” Parker said. “It can take 12 to 24 months to rollout and our system is up and running in 12 weeks.”

CEVA’s will be using Kontainers’ Enterprise platform, which provides instant rates, booking, customs, trucking, full- and less-than-container load services, global schedules, bill of lading, chat support, dashboard analytics, payment system and a full back office application.

The addition of CEVA, now a subsidiary of CMA CGM, means that Kontainers has relationships with one-quarter of the world’s top 20 forwarders. 

The deal with Kontainers is also likely to also extend into CEVA’s air freight business by next year, Parker said. 

With the addition of CEVA, Parker said Kontainers software platform will be handling approximately 1.1 million transactions annually, accounting for about 2.5 million standard size ocean containers.