Electronic data exchange across companies has become more and more important. In order to improve productivity and implementation time through standardizing the data formats between supply chain actors.
As a first step, in January 2021, ECTA published the latest version of a first best practice guideline for transport visibility within bulk chemicals. It defines transport milestone events and ETx update messages for various supply chain actors.

In the order-to-cash process within bulk logistics, additional data next to visibility is exchanged between shippers and logistics service providers. On the one hand, order-related information is transmitted from the shipper to the logistics service provider to specify shipment instructions. On the other hand, after transport execution the exchange of invoice-related information takes place to trigger the completion of a service.

Besides bare freight costs also extra cost-related items, such as heating, truck waiting times or other auxiliary services are handled during the payment process.
The objective of this guideline on transport order data standards is to complement the existing visibility guideline. Moreover to give the involved stakeholders additional guidance how to facilitate electronic data exchange in this area. In addition, the recommendation is given to apply an order data standard based on OAGIS® Chem eStandard 5.4 

This new ECTA Guideline, is an update of an ECTA guideline.