The digitalization of shipping relies on three pillars – the software platform, the data behind it, and the professionals working with the package. Each of the former two faces its own challenges when developing them to best suit the needs of the latter. In the age of enormous information flows, it has become next to impossible for an individual or even a team of members to flawlessly process every bit out there by themselves.
Standardization and automation of dataflows are vital for any shipping business to run. The more advanced the solution at your fingertips is, the higher efficiency you can achieve. This is where modern-day APIs come in to help you.
An application programming interface, or API, is a set of definitions, protocols, and tools, clearly defining the methods of communication among various software components. However, people tend to generalize when talking about APIs and commonly mean “a publicly available interface that returns data”. It’s worth noting that the API itself is neither the database, nor the server, but the code governing the server’s access points. It’s there to help you when the task of importing and storing data, as well as keeping it up to date, could potentially overwhelm your business.
The pioneer and leading provider of in-depth analysis to the liner shipping industry combined with advanced solutions for liner shipping professionals, has announced API integration in its services. Alphaliner’s APIs let users access the most recent and accurate raw data on global liner services to perform customized analysis with auto-populating data options. APIs can be further integrated in various BI software and offer a wide array of input parameters as standard for full control of raw data by the user.
Based on the big data behind its APIs, Alphaliner is also releasing another module, called AXSInsights. It contains Alphaliner pre-set analysis to keep users tuned on a wide range of market indicators, such as orderbook stats, inactive fleet overview, charter rates, and more. Alphaliner’s new module includes virtually unlimited possibilities to create any visual to easily read what’s hidden behind raw numbers.
“Historically, APIs have been around since the early days of computing, even preceding the invention of the PC. But in the age of Big Data, we at Alphaliner are constantly striving to provide our clients with new and reliable ways to read into the ever-growing datasets”, said Steve Fletcher, CCO at Alphaliner. “With our API integration, our users will enjoy the most powerful tools on the market, giving them full control of the data, as well as seamless integration options with in-house systems. Our experience of over 10 years mastering APIs is key for innovating and redefining shipping software as a service for our clients.”
