Ancotrans sets the pace as APIs transform Europe’s container transport industry
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Find out how Ancotrans is pioneering APIs to integrate IT platforms, systems, and applications to share data and documents
Replacing complexity with transparency
When the Suez Canal was blocked for six days in 2021, the cost to international trade was estimated to be more than USD $50 billion. With food, fuel, and manufactured goods stranded, economies worldwide soon experienced shortages of raw materials and finished products.
The impact on international business highlighted the incredible complexity of today’s extended global supply chains, and the organisation and co-ordination required to move goods from the factory floor to a retail outlet sometimes thousands of miles away.
Today’s leading transportation businesses strive to provide a seamless, end-to-end delivery service that enables customers to know with certainty, minute-by-minute, where their cargo is and when it will arrive. They do this by harnessing and sharing the power of data, connecting and integrating vast networks of IT systems and technology platforms in a single, digital environment.
At the forefront of a digital revolution that’s replacing legacy transport management systems with AI and automation is Ancotrans, one of Northern Europe’s leading container transport businesses. Operating out of Denmark, Germany, Sweden, and the Netherlands, Ancotrans’ 950 trucks complete 375,000 container deliveries every year, from ports and rail hubs across Northern Europe, direct to customers’ premises
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MuleSoft anchors change and innovation
“There are immense changes taking place in global supply chains,” explained Ancotrans’ Digital Transformation Officer, Claus Bjerg. “We knew that to continue to be the partner of choice for major shipping companies and freight forwarders, we needed digital capabilities that help them achieve their goals faster and more efficiently.”
Bjerg took up his newly created post at Ancotrans in 2021 after a long career at Maersk, one of the world’s biggest shipping and logistics companies. With deep experience and understanding of the emerging role of digital technologies in logistics supply chains, he was ideally placed to guide Ancotrans through its digital transformation.
“Our industry has been lagging in its adoption of new technologies, but now it’s on the move. To stay ahead of our competition, it was important that we acted quickly and were innovative in our approach, to maintain our position and continue to grow.”
When Bjerg embarked on a five-year strategy to replace all of Ancotrans’ legacy IT infrastructure and systems, one of his first decisions was to deploy the MuleSoft Anypoint Platform. As the company’s cornerstone data integration solution, this would help manage a period of complex change ahead, accelerate the completion of key IT projects, and maximise investment value.
“As we developed our roadmap, it became clear that, with many parts in our transformation and running old and new systems in parallel for a time, building a structured API environment with MuleSoft would help us keep control and manage complexity.
“As we unplug old systems and plug in new ones, it’s vital that there are no disruptions to business as usual. MuleSoft provides visibility into our API landscape, with live monitoring and troubleshooting capabilities, to ensure that doesn’t happen.”
Streamlining growth through acquisitions
While the initial focus has been on deploying MuleSoft, supported by expertise from Salesforce Professional Services, to establish a modern integration platform and execute its internal digital transformation, Ancotrans is already beginning to exploit its capabilities for the benefit of customers.
“Our customers need real-time information about the whereabouts of their cargo, GPS-level detail, and access to all documentation relating to each consignment. To do this we’ve built order processing APIs in MuleSoft for a few of our main customers and we’re currently reusing this standardised approach to quickly and efficiently onboard all our current order integration customers by summer 2024.
“MuleSoft also gives us the scalability to grow through opportunistic acquisitions because we have an API playbook to quickly and seamlessly absorb new businesses into our existing environment.”
PortPro tailored to the European market
With the API integration infrastructure firmly established, Ancotrans also had the confidence to make a bold move in its selection of a new Transport Management System (TMS), partnering with US-based PortPro to bring new advanced levels of automation and real-time tracking to Europe for the first time.
“In many ways, we’re driving the move to API-based data integration in our industry. We’re committed to maximising innovation, speed, and efficiency in the services we provide for our customers. Our decision to work with PortPro to develop our new TMS, with MuleSoft API infrastructure at its core, is a great example of this.
“PortPro is well known in the United States and is designed specifically for the management of container transport. We believe that by tailoring a version specifically for the European market we can deliver real competitive advantage for our customers,” said Bjerg.
“And there’s a bigger picture for Ancotrans too. The more we reduce our carbon footprint through digitisation and automation, the more confident we are of achieving our own sustainability goal – to be 100% carbon neutral by 2040.”
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