"'Where's my paper?' That's the first question our staff would ask when they started using the DTTN," says Jakob Jeppesen, the general manager of freight-forwarding company DFDS Transport (HK) Limited ("DFDS").

"As a freight forwarder," he continues "we deal with many different suppliers - airlines, shipping companies, warehouses etc - and we have a continuous exchange of critical information, such as orders, schedules, confirmation documents, and so on. There? a big need to re-use this information, or parts of it, and it must always be totally accurate."

"For a long time now we have had very good IT systems, and we try to get everything into our computers as early as possible in the whole process because it makes the information readily available. Inputting speed and accuracy are vital. We have this philosophy that we only want to type anything once. That's Number One - it helps eliminate a lot of errors."

"But even though we had these high tech computer systems," he continues, "and efficient inputting, we were not able to get data online, or exchange information easily with others who needed it. In order to communicate with all the other companies involved in our freight forwarding transactions, we'd always have to print out the information and fax it to them, then we'd get information faxed back and then have to re-input the new data into our system. That meant a significant delay - from the time that we received the fax and keyed in the information till the time it becomes available for use. There was lots of duplication of work and plenty of opportunity for small errors."

"We felt there had to be a better way, so when we got invited to participate in the DTTN pilot, we accepted."

DFDS was one of the first companies in Hong Kong to enroll in the DTTN pilot, and they're very satisfied with the results.

"The way I see DTTN," says Mr. Jeppesen, "is as a big translator. That's a non-IT explanation, but it's the language that I understand. When our customer - the shipper - sends booking information to us through the DTTN, they can prepare it in their own format and use any program they like and send it to the DTTN. The DTTN will automatically take that information and translate it into the format that our program can understand and use the information. Then, when we send informationon to other parties who need to use it, the DTTN will translate it into whatever format they use. There is no need to print out the incoming information and have it retyped into your own format: the DTTN has done that for you automatically. You also don't need to worry about the compatibility of computer systems or data formats: the DTTN can link them all, so that no one in the whole information chain needs to change their systems or their software. This is critical for us as most of our clients are SMEs and don't have sophisticated computer systems or big budgets. The DTTN not only makes the processes of information exchange easy, it's very affordable."

"What we really like about the system," he continues, "is that we only need one link. We don't need to have individual links with 12 different airlines, 12 different shipping lines, 8 different warehouses we use," he says. "We all just have one common link through the DTTN."

Of course, establishing those first links requires a commitment of time and resources, and the other businesses you're dealing with must also be willing to link to the DTTN.

Using a process called mapping, the DTTN consultants work with the clients to identify all documents to be exchanged electronically with their partners - shipping orders, shipping instructions, purchase orders, bill of lading, etc. - as well as the formats and computer programs that the clients are using to process that information. They then set up an "interlink" to the DTTN platform and develop a map for each document so that each specific detail in the document will automatically get converted from the sender's format to the recipient's format.

"You have to be patient with this," says Mr. Jeppesen. "To start, we picked about six documents, our core documents, the ones that would save us the most time and labour by getting them online. We're steadily building on that, and in the future I'd like to be able to use the DTTN for invoicing, e-payments, bill of lading, etc. - there's much that can be done with this platform."

"Then we had to get our clients and suppliers involved. The people on the sending or receiving end need to be prepared to look at it and get it into their systems - we cannot do it alone. We had to work out a lot of details, and that requires careful coordination and good two-way communication. Now we've got it up and running with some of our customers, the information is coming in the way we need it, so now we want to go out and promote it to more customers. We have the confidence that we can see it and it's working, and it's created benefits for us."

"The next thing I want to see," adds Mr. Jeppesen, is other players involved in the supply chain - shipping lines, terminals, airlines - all to be a part of this state-of-the-art e-logistics platform. If everybody could get on board, that would make it so much better."