Tideworks prides itself on its EDI capability and has offered a fully hosted EDI service platform, called EDI Porter, for some time now. EPaaP is a new product for terminals that want an off-the-shelf system that they host and administer in-house.

Michael Schwank, president of Tideworks said EPaaP gives the customer more options where they have in­house resources to devote to EDI. EPaaP was developed with Tideworks’ customer Baltic Container Terminal (BCT) in Gdynia Poland, which wanted to administer its own EDI inhouse. Schwank said BCT has its own highly skilled team of IT professionals and “this type of solution makes sense for them”.

With EPaaP, BCT has a complete toolkit to establish and maintain EDI partnerships, message sets and mapping with local partners as required. EPaaP features a “wizard” for adding new trading partners and a “visibility window”, so BCT can see the status of EDI messages (the most popular helpdesk request) without needing a support person that can read EDI script.

The licensing and support agreement gives BCT access to Tideworks’ ongoing development work on customs and other EDI message formats and requirements. Tideworks follows and is represented on several EDI committees and working groups, including the US Customs Automated Commercial Environment group. US requirements change regularly and, as the third largest exchanger of EDI with US Customs, Tideworks keeps on top of this, said Schwank.

BCT is very pleased with the result. “BCT has some unique trading partner relationships, which require a solid EDI foundation, as well as the ability for us to adapt to changing needs. We knew we could depend on Tideworks to deliver a solution that would meet our current and future requirements in this area.  We couldn’t be more pleased with the outcome and with the capabilities of the product,” said IT manager Andrzej Pulawski.

As to what solution is best for other terminals, Schwank said that really depends on the terminal’s requirements, in­house ability and their comfort level with hosted applications. The in­house option requires having resources on hand 24/7, and for some terminals this is not cost­effective compared to a fully hosted application. At the moment EPaaP is offered with Mainsail, but for the future Tideworks may accommodate terminal operators that want to support another TOS.

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This complete item is approximately 400 words in length, and appeared in the March 2015 issue of WorldCargo News, on page 22. To access this issue download the PDF here.