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Clearing Center

Exchange Electronic Data

Data exchange

You want to exchange electronic data? There are many areas where this need occurs.

Data can be exchanged between

• Forwarders and their customers (purchase order, booking, ...)
• Forwarders and airlines
• Forwarders and customs
• Forwarders and agents
• Forwarder and service providers (e.g. RSI)
• Forwarder and their partners (other forwarders)

Specify data

To exchange data, you need to specify a data or file format. This format describes the way the data/file is structured. There are many different formats, some are (or just seem to be) common standards, while others are defined according to a special agreement between two parties.

Here are some existing formats

• UN EDIFACT (several message types for different purposes: IFTSTA, IFCSUM, IFTMCS, ...)
• CargoIMP (FWB, FSU, FSA, FSR, FFR, FFA, FNA, FMA)
• Customs Proprietary (US customs, German customs, ...)

Transport data

In addition to the file format, the data must be transported from A to B. There exist a number of ways to transport data and these are referred to as protocols.

Some examples of protocols are

• SMTP (Internet Email)
• FTP (File Transfer Protocol)
• X.400

Summary

To sum up, there are three areas which are vital for data exchange

Areas

• the purpose of the data exchange
• the data or file formats to be used in the data exchange
• the transport protocols to be used in the data exchange

Know How

If you need to exchange data with more than one party, you may have to support multiple data formats and multiple transport mechanisms. This would require that you have the Know How in all these fields in order to realize your project. Finally, once up and running, successful data exchange requires continuous attention and further Know How for the following reasons:

Reasons

• Data (file) formats change
• Transport methods change
• Error tracing (if message are lost; time lags, ...)

The RSI Clearing Center operates to address all the above requirements.

As you have seen in the last section, data exchange is more than just moving something from A to B, it's a complicated process and RSI wants to make this process as simple as possible for you.

RSI has more than 10 years experience in data exchange, so you will benefit from our Know How and we will make data exchange easier for you.

Work-flow

In practice it works as follows: "data is send via the RSI Clearing Center."

You benefit because

• you only have to support one data format
• you only have to support your preferred transport protocol
• you don't need to worry if the recipients data format or transport method changes
• you minimize your own error tracing

Services

The services RSI provides to you are:

Services

• Conversion of your data to a suitable format for the recipient
• Error tracing
• Statistics
• Automatic update of data format due to version changes.

Further services

Once you start sending data via the RSI Clearing Center you benefit from further services which until recently were only available to our customers. These services include data conversion which enables you to use our existing services and connections, such as:

Data Conversion

• Internet Tracking and Tracing
• Customs Proprietary (US customs, German customs (Atlas), ...)
• CargoIMP