What’s New: Xeneta Product Releases in Q4 2024

In recent years, future-thinking shippers have pivoted transport modes in response to geopolitical events, moved operations to get ahead of supply chain disruptions, and stockpiled inventory to mitigate changing consumer demand and tariff increases.  

Every pivot takes time, costs money and drastically changes how you calculate your rate outlook. 

With market volatility here to stay, emerging technologies can offer the transparency and data that procurement professionals need to act, not react. 

Here are four high-demand ocean products – unveiled at the 2024 Xeneta Summit – designed to boost supply chain resiliency, improve benchmarking accuracy, support internal alignment and budget planning, and sharpen competitive positioning. 

All products are now live in Xeneta’s ocean platform. 

Market Rate Outlook: Navigating volatility and staying ahead of potential future trends

In today’s complex and volatile market, staying ahead of rate trends is critical. We’ve seen time and time again that lack of visibility into future market movement is something that causes pain for all shippers — everyone wants to know that their strategy and budget aren’t going to be disrupted by unexpected rate surges or falls. 

While it’s not possible to give procurement professionals an exact look into the future, or predict events such as Covid-19 or the Red Sea Crisis, Xeneta has the technical capabilities, volume of data, industry expertise, and huge community of shippers and forwarders needed to create a data-backed view of what the future could look like. 

How does it work?

Market Rate Outlook is a unique product that brings together rate predictions for the top regional corridors for 40' Dry Container types. Using machine-learning, analyst expertise, and community insights to suggest what long-term ocean rates could look like 3-6 months in the future, it derives its predictions from today’s actual rates, market variables and macroeconomic factors, industry expert commentary, and aggregated community feedback. 

How it benefits you: 

Whether you’re preparing for budget season, managing contract renewals, or assessing your time to market, Market Rate Outlook will serve to inform your planning and budgeting. Refreshed monthly – with analyst commentary refreshed quarterly – you can rest assured that you always have the data and analyst backed outlook needed to align your procurement, leadership and finance teams.  

Transit Times: Optimizing time to market and supplier selection

Xeneta is underpinned by 15 million+ contracted rates added every month. While the data paints an accurate view of the market, we’re dedicated to providing context around those rates – and service level data is key to this. Understanding how transit times vary across carriers can directly impact your ability to meet demand and maintain supply chain efficiency. We know how important this is, so in partnership with Marine Benchmark and eeSea, we sought to bring them to the Xeneta platform. 

What is it? 

With this dataset, you’ll be able to see the announced and actual transit times of ocean shipments from the world’s largest carriers. You can layer these on top of your rates, market rates, and carrier rates to see how these influence the price you pay and which carriers are providing the most consistent level of service.  

How it benefits you: 

By combining rate visibility with performance metrics such as Transit Times, you’ll be able to spot trends in service consistency, identify opportunities to optimize carrier selection, and ensure you’re paying a fair rate for the level of service provided. Beyond rate comparison, this knowledge empowers you to evaluate levels of service as part of your procurement strategy.  

Peer Comparison: Analyzing your competitive position against your industry peers

Up until now, Xeneta customers have been benchmarking themselves against the entire market. While this is a hugely important thing to do, it only gives part of the story when you’re looking to really understand the competitiveness of your position. 

Peer Comparison gives a corridor-level on how your market position compares to up to three industries of your choosing. This allows you to tighten the scope of your negotiations and bring data-backed, neutral numbers to the table.  

What is it? 

Peer Comparison is a benchmarking product that allows shippers to identify their market position and measure their spend performance against peers within their industry segment alongside the wider market. 

Not only can you analyze your competitive position today, you can assess trends over time, meaning you can track how your performance evolves, and how this differs from your competitors. 

How it benefits you: 

In an industry where tailored insights matter, Peer Comparison gives you the real-time and historical data you need to negotiate from a position of strength — putting data at the heart of all your discussions.  

You can quickly assess whether your rates are in line with your industry spread and easily narrow down your supplier selection based on the closeness of their rates to your benchmark and goals. The on-demand nature of this product also means the output changes with the market. So, if a black swan event hits and you’re forced to renegotiate, you will always be able to lead with hyper-relevant data and secure justifiable rates. 

Whether you’re aiming to refine your procurement strategies, or demonstrate your market positioning to internal stakeholders, this product provides the granularity needed to act with precision. 

North America Routing: Precise benchmarking and avoiding disruptions

When shipping to inland locations in the U.S. and Canada, the price paid can vary depending on which coast the shipment arrives at. This is due to different transit times and conditions (strikes, congestion, etc.) at ports on the East or West coast. 

To support shippers/forwarders that import or export cargo to/from North America, the North Americia Routing filter adds another layer of precision to your searches, giving you the most accurate price benchmark to use in negotiations, and providing foresight into the impact of disruptions on deliverability. 

What is it? 

A North America routing filter for searches in the platform, enabling users to evaluate the pricing differences between various regions and ports across the continent. 

How it benefits you: 

Not all U.S. ports are created equal, and regional price differentials can significantly impact your bottom line. With the North America Routing filter, you can break down rate variances by region and entry/exit point, helping you to choose the most cost-effective routes for your cargo. 

Not only does North America Routing impact price and supplier selection, but it’s also vital in times of disruptions. When strikes or port closures hit, it’s imperative that you can reroute your cargo with as minimal price and timing impact as possible.   

Whether you’re comparing shipments into New Jersey versus Florida, or looking at regional rate disparities across the Midwest, this tool allows for a more granular analysis of your transportation options. The result? Better budgeting, smarter route planning, and maximized cost efficiency when moving goods in and out of North America. 

What’s Next? 

Xeneta’s solutions combine machine learning, analyst expertise, and community insights to help identify what the market could look like in the future based on current events. These solutions can also support procurement professionals to analyze, align, and negotiate based on current market position against industry peers. 

As Fabio Brocca, Chief Product Officer at Xeneta, noted at the 2024 Xeneta Summit: “While nobody can predict Covid-19 or the Red Sea Crisis, procurement professionals are constantly making decisions based on their outlook for the next few quarters. When there is so much volatility and uncertainty across global supply chains, providing market guidance feels like an impossible task. 

“The industry has come a long way using technology and data to improve every procurement process, but thanks to advancement in machine learning and AI we can now go even further by providing explainable predictions on how the market is likely to develop in the future.” 

With these enhancements, Xeneta is empowering procurement teams to stay ahead of market changes, refine their decision-making, and strengthen their supply chains. From predictive rate insights to peer-based benchmarking and transit time analysis, Xeneta’s Ocean platform offers the tools needed to remain competitive in a constantly evolving market. 

To find out more about these products and understand how they'll impact your procurement processes in 2025 and beyond, please get in touch. A member of our team will reach out to understand your needs and assess how Xeneta's full product suite can support you.

If you're already a Xeneta customer, log in today to try these new products. If you need any assistance, please reach out to your customer success manager.