Adoption Guide

• Understand the Booking and Bill of Lading standards and their benefits.
• Evaluate why your organisation should adopt the Booking or Bill of Lading standard or both. Build the business case if necessary.
• Gain internal agreement and resources to prepare and implement the adoption journey.

Map your current booking and bill of lading processes against the DCSA standards to identify which use cases and standard modules are relevant to your organization. It is possible to use a phased approach, implementing single modules of the standard in multiple stages. For example, starting with booking requests and confirmations, later expanding the scope of your implementation to booking amendments and cancellations. 

• Identify all stakeholders (e.g. ocean carriers, consignees, banks, eBL solution providers) to participate in a pilot. 
• Identify the trade lane(s), shipment details and use case(s) to perform the booking and bill of lading processes with the participating stakeholders.  
• Prepare your IT system and infrastructure to use the Booking and Bill of Lading standards.   
• Implement the relevant API modules and complete the conformance tests to ensure interoperability and conformance to the DCSA standards before starting the pilot.  
• Address any issues that arise during the conformance tests and complete the implementation. 
• Run the pilot with the selected stakeholders and address any potential issues iteratively until successful completion.   

• Upon pilot completion, identify benefits and areas for improvement. Prepare for full-scale operational roll-out with other ocean carriers. 
• Align and execute activities across all necessary internal departments to carry out the operational roll-out. 
• Find the latest implementation update of our member carriers and the links to their API portals. 

• Measure the benefits after the full-scale roll-out
• Confirm return on investment of the project
• Identify lessons learned for continuous improvement.
• Roll-out to other carriers.
• Provide feedback to DCSA to improve the Booking and Bill of Lading standards.

• Understand the Bill of Lading standard and its benefits. 
• Evaluate why your organisation should adopt the Bill of Lading standard. Build the business case if necessary. 
• Gain internal agreement and resources to prepare and execute the adoption journey. 

Map your current bill of lading processes against the DCSA standard to identify which use cases and standard modules are relevant to your organization. It is possible to use a phased approach, implementing single modules of the standard in multiple stages. For example, starting with the eBL surrender module, later expanding the scope of your implementation to eBL issuance.  

• Identify all stakeholders (e.g. ocean carriers, shippers, banks, eBL solution providers) to participate in a pilot. 
• Identify the trade lane(s), shipment details and use case(s) to perform the bill of lading processes with the participating stakeholders. 
• Prepare your IT system and infrastructure to use the Bill of Lading standard.   
• Implement the relevant API modules and complete the conformance tests to ensure interoperability and conformance to the DCSA standards before starting the pilot.  
• Address any issues that arise during the conformance tests and complete the implementation. 
• Run the pilot with the selected stakeholders and address any potential issues iteratively until successful completion.   

• Upon pilot completion, identify benefits and areas for improvement. Prepare for full-scale operational roll-out with other ocean carriers. 
• Align and execute activities across all necessary internal departments to carry out the operational roll-out. 
• Find the latest implementation update of our member carriers and the links to their API portal. 

• Measure the benefits after the full-scale roll-out. 
• Confirm return on investment of the project. 
• Identify lessons learned and provide feedback to DCSA for continuous improvement. 
• Celebrate the implementation of DCSA standards and share the news with your customers and network.  

Map the processes and data attributes of the DCSA Booking and Bill of Lading standards against the data fields of your internal database to determine how well your existing infrastructure aligns with the standards requirements. 

Develop a detailed implementation plan outlining the steps and timeline for adopting the standards. This may include the following steps: Gap analysis and requirement solutioning, API development, User Acceptance Testing (UAT), DCSA conformance testing and compliance fixes, running pilots with customers and operational roll-out. Consider the impact on different departments and plan for any necessary training or resource allocation.  

• Evaluate the costs and benefits of the standards implementation to build a business case and gain internal stakeholder and management approval. 
• Request for the required resources to carry out the implementation according to the plan.  

• Based on the implementation plan, explain who should be doing what and the timeline. Internal stakeholders include: Documentation team to map the relevant booking and bill of lading processes and the data attributes; IT to prepare the IT system and infrastructure to implement the APIs and perform conformance testing; Sales & Marketing to promote the benefits of DCSA Booking and Bill of Lading APIs to customers.  
• Plan and execute change management. 

• Prepare your IT system and infrastructure to develop the Booking and Bill of Lading APIs.   
• Develop the APIs and perform the conformance tests. Address any issues that arise during the conformance test and complete the implementation. 

• Identify potential customers and eBL solution providers to run pilots with for the booking or bill of lading processes.  
• Build a plan and confirm scope and set up of each pilot, as agreed with the customer and eBL solution provider. A pilot is typically done in a safe environment, piloting a relatively simple process, with known trade partners. 
• Run the pilot and address any potential issues iteratively until successful completion.   

• Upon pilot completion, identify benefits and areas for improvement. Prepare for full-scale operational roll-out with other customers and third-party logistics providers. 
• Align and execute activities across all necessary internal departments to carry out the operational roll-out. 
• Expand the roll-out to more complex process flows (e.g. to-order BLs, dangerous goods, including more stakeholders). 
• Identify lessons learned and provide feedback to DCSA for continuous improvement. 
• Celebrate the implementation of DCSA standards and share the news with your customers and network.  

Map the processes and data attributes of the DCSA Bill of Lading standard (Issuance & Surrender modules) and Platform Interoperability standard against the data fields of your internal database to determine how well your existing infrastructure aligns with the standard requirements. 

Develop a detailed implementation plan outlining the steps and timeline for adopting the standards. This may include the following steps: Gap analysis and requirement solutioning, API development, User Acceptance Testing (UAT), DCSA conformance testing and compliance fixes, running pilots with carriers and other eBL solution providers and operational roll-out.  

• Evaluate the costs and benefits of the standards implementation to build a business case and gain internal stakeholder and management approval. 
• Request for the required resources to carry out the implementation according to the plan. 

• Prepare your IT system and infrastructure to develop the Issuance, Surrender and Platform Interoperability APIs.   
• Develop the APIs and perform the conformance tests. Address any issues that arise during the conformance test and complete the implementation.

• Identify potential stakeholders (e.g. ocean carriers, shippers, freight forwarders, other eBL solution providers) to participate in a pilot.  
• Build a plan and define the exact pilot setup and scope in close collaboration with the participating stakeholders. A pilot is typically done in a safe environment, piloting a relatively simple process, with known trade partners. 
• Run the pilot and address any potential issues iteratively until successful completion.   

• Upon pilot completion, identify benefits and areas for improvement. Prepare for full-scale operational roll-out with other ocean carriers and eBL solution providers. 
• Align and execute activities across all necessary internal departments to carry out the operational roll-out. 
• Expand the roll-out to more complex process flows (e.g. to-order BLs, including more stakeholders). 
• Identify lessons learned and provide feedback to DCSA for continuous improvement. 
• Celebrate the implementation of DCSA standards and share the news with your customers and network.  

• Understand the Bill of Lading and Platform Interoperability standards and their benefits. 
• Evaluate why your organisation should adopt these standards. Build the business case if necessary. 
• Gain internal agreement and resources to prepare and execute the adoption journey. 

• Start product approval process within the relevant internal functions of the bank. 
• Start the implementation process with your eBL solution provider. 

• Identify all stakeholders (e.g. ocean carriers, cargo owners, freight forwarders, eBL solution providers) to participate in a pilot.  
• Build a plan and define the exact pilot setup and scope in close collaboration with the participating stakeholders. A pilot is typically done in a safe environment, piloting a relatively simple process, with known trade partners. 
• Provide the relevant information to the participating stakeholders as required to run the pilot.  

• Upon pilot completion, identify benefits and areas for improvement. Prepare for full-scale operational roll-out with other clients.  
• Align and execute activities across all necessary internal departments to carry out the full-scale operational roll-out.  
• Expand the roll-out to more complex process flows (e.g. to-order BLs, include more stakeholders). 
• Identify lessons learned and provide feedback to DCSA for continuous improvement. 
• Celebrate the implementation of DCSA standards and share the news with your customers and network.