Global Freight Trading Platform
Discover why technology makes CAF a unique Freight Trading concept.
The business of freight trading is centuries old, steeped in history, tradition and by today’s standards is increasingly inefficient. CAF was designed to mirror the natural trading process between cargo charterers, vessel owners and brokers, without the inefficiency and with transparency and certainty.
Purpose built
We started with a blank sheet and built CAF from scratch, taking into account the needs of all parties and the functionalities and nuances they wanted. Informed by years of freight trading experience, the CAF platform provides everything that the parties need in one place, with additional features like payment by blockchain, planned for the future. CAF will change the game of trading now and lead its future.
Cloud based
A key consideration was access to all parties, which meant Software as a Service (SaaS) rather than on-premise deployment. Apart from secure, encrypted user access from anywhere, the cloud model also requires no in-house software maintenance or skill, ensures automatic upgrades and provides a cost-effective alternative to capital investment in software. For all parties, the cloud model is more accessible and less expensive.
Integrated
The platform had to be complete, with all the functionality required for trading in one place. The alternatives of Cargo & Vessel Matching, Voyage & Distance Calculators or general Shipping Operations software all lack any trading capability, and show how difficult it is to extract and collate data from them.
CAF is a fully-integrated platform with 3 specific trading modules, underpinned by Voyage & Distance Calculators, Charterers Daily Pricing Matrices and automated contract generation functionality. With CAF, there is no need for other systems before, during and after the trade, and it can be integrated with Shipping Operations software. CAF can also be integrated with other back-end enterprise systems too.
Easy to use
Freight trading has involved manual, person-to-person processes for centuries and technology has been a relatively recent arrival. For this reason, we designed CAF to be easy to use by cargo shippers, vessel owners and brokers who don’t have or want to develop advanced IT skills. The interface is user-friendly, the dashboards are easy to customise, the workflows are logical and drag-and-drop functionality makes it simple and accurate to use.
Mobile Friendly
One of the challenges of using disparate systems for freight trading is that they don’t all work on tablets or smart phones. That means that data has to be saved, retrieved and send between devices, which further complicates and delays the trading process. The CAF platform was designed from the outset for use on fixed and mobile devices, to allow seamless access to real time data by all parties, regardless of where they are.
Modular
CAF was designed as a single integrated platform with 3 distinct modules, each covering an important element in the trading process:
The 3 primary modules are complete and discrete, so cargo charterers, vessel owners and brokers can choose the ones they need and add others as required without integration, redundancy or delay. These primacy modules can be supported by voyage and distance calculators, customised dashboards and daily pricing matrices.