SAP AG has announced that Panalpina, a global provider of logistics services, will deploy the SAP Transportation Management application to help modernise the core transportation and logistics functions of its air and ocean freight businesses.

With SAP Transportation Management, Panalpina will implement a logistics applications platform that will connect its suppliers, partners and customers into a collaborative business network. Core transportation and logistics operations will be managed on the network, allowing unprecedented levels of inter-company collaboration, resulting in cost reductions, improved billing accuracy, enhanced shipment visibility and automated shipping operations. This initiative extends Panalpina's existing relationship with SAP in deploying standardised business processes.

SAP Transportation Management supports all of Panalpina's modes of transport and includes core processes that improve collaboration and enable real-time shipment notification. In addition, Panalpina can now more readily position its service offerings to customers working with SAP systems and use the simplified integration to its SAP-based business network as a competitive differentiator.

"It is extremely important to us that the new IT solution provides clear business benefits to our customers," says Monika Ribar, CEO, Panalpina. "The majority of our own customers and partners are already on SAP, which greatly improves standardisation and communication between our systems. New application extensions can be quickly added to the system when needed and non-SAP systems can also be tied in easily," she says.

SAP Transportation Management offers comprehensive capabilities in freight management, transportation dispatching and execution, transportation charge management, and integrated financial oversight in customer billing and freight auditing. It supports all land, sea, multi-modal and air modes, including multi-leg, parcel, buy/sell–side rating, tendering, freight contract management, documentation, planning and execution. These functionalities are all interconnected to create a holistic solution for end-to-end business process execution within and across company boundaries.