DCM Glossary / Business Terms

Summary

Description

Shipper

The manufacturer & supplier of goods to their clients

Vendor

For the purposes of SEKO, synonymous with the Shipper

Consignor

The organisation equivalent to, or an affiliate of, the Shipper / Vendor, to appear on all official documents in relation to a shipment

Shipper's Client

The client of the Shipper, to whom the Shipper is ultimately supplying the goods (but need SEKO to manage the collection & delivery of those goods)

Consignee

The organisation equivalent to, or an affiliate of, the Shipper's Client, to appear on all official documents in relation to a shipment. Alternatively it may be a Sales Office of the Consignor, acting on behalf of the Shipper’s Client.

Branch

A SEKO organisation that is part of the SEKO group, typically distinguished by origin country (for the Shipper) and destination country (the Shipper's Client)

Client

A client of SEKO. This could be the Shipper requiring SEKO's freight forwarding services (the client of the SEKO Branch at origin country), and/or the Shipper's Client (the client of the SEKO Branch at destination country, or the Shipper's Client wishing to use SEKO's systems for PO / DCM management)

Supplier

A supplier of shipment / freight services (e.g., Carrier, co-loader, partner Agent). Note that where a SEKO Branch itself performs activities as part of a Shipment, that SEKO Branch is a special form of Supplier in this context.

For the purposes of this document, it should be remembered that the term ‘Supplier’ is meant from SEKO’s perspective i.e., a supplier of services allowing SEKO to effectively manage the end-to-end processes of a Shipment. It should not be confused with the concept of ‘the supplier of goods’, for which the terms ‘Shipper / Vendor / Consignor’ are reserved.

Agent

A partner Freight Forwarding or Carrier company to whom SEKO subcontracts its services. It is a special form of Supplier in the context of Shipments management

Customs Broker

The Supplier who performs the function of ensuring that import & export compliance processes and documentation is correctly and fully carried out. This is a special type of Supplier, which could also be a SEKO Branch at origin or destination

Term

Description

Booking

An instruction or request received by a SEKO branch from one of its SEKO clients, requesting a movement of goods

Shipment

A sequence of operational activities that SEKO branches need to manage and oversee, in moving goods and fulfilling client Bookings, on behalf of a given Consignor / Consignee

Supplier Instruction

This is an instruction sent by SEKO to external suppliers (e.g., Carriers, Co-loaders, Agents etc) to carry out the tasks and activities of the Shipments

Back-to-Back

This is a Supplier Instruction which assigns ALL the activities of a given Shipment to that Supplier i.e., a Client Booking was received, a Shipment is created to manage it, and the entirety of that Shipment's activities is handed off to a Supplier

FCL

Full Container Load. Goods within an individual Shipment for a given consignor/consignee take up all the space in a Container. This term is officially applied to Sea and Rail shipments, although the concept also exists for Air freight

LCL

Less Than Container Load. Goods within an individual Shipment for a given consignor/consignee would not be enough to fill a whole Container. Rather than consignor or consignee bearing the cost of an entire Container, they expect SEKO to consolidate more than one shipment (either from the same consignor, or from multiple consignors) into a single Container to obtain better costs efficiency. This term is officially applied to Sea and Rail shipments, although the concept also exists for Air freight.

FTL

Full Truck Load - the equivalent of FCL, but for Road freight. In this case the truck is fully loaded at the Shipper's factory and makes the entire road journey for one official Shipment to one Consignee's warehouse

LTL

Less Than Truck Load - the equivalent of LCL, but for Road freight. A Road Shipment does not have enough goods to fill a trailer on the truck. In this case, rather than there being consolidation into Containers at a freight station (as for Sea / Rail / Air), the 'consolidation' is typically handled by the Supplier (Carrier) who may either do a 'milk run' between multiple origin factories (either for the same Shipper, or for different Shippers), or may wait until several different Shipments at the Shipper's factory are all ready for collection and then turn up to collect. In either case, the single truck would then be effectively carrying multiple Shipments. The carrier may then need to do multiple delivery drops at the Destination end, if the Shipments cover multiple Consignees or multiple warehouses for a given Consignee.

Container

For Sea / Rail, this will be an official solid box of several different shapes and sizes, with tracked serial numbers and identifiers as part of Supplier Instructions, to be loaded onto the Vessel or the goods train. For Air, this will be an official box called a 'ULD' (Universal Load Device), shaped specifically for cargo holds of aircraft, with its own serial numbers and identifiers, and can only be loaded by approved Agents at a freight station.

For Road transport, the trailer containing the goods is not typically deemed a 'container'; instead, the general information about the truck itself (e.g., registration numbers) is captured as part of Supplier Instructions.

SOP

Standard Operations Procedure... usually set up as part of client onboarding and standard processes. These will also be used to further inform how Shipments and Suppliers are set up once Client Bookings have been received (note that Bookings may only contain minimal information and therefore Shipment setups need to also be informed by the defined SOP).

Consolidation

Processing and loading of goods from multiple Shipments into one Container or trailer for the purposes of a Consol

Consol

This is another kind of Shipment, representing Goods from more than one LCL or LTL Shipment consolidated into a single container (or truck). Activities within a Consol are then booked in external Supplier Instructions e.g., a Sea / Rail / Air / Road Carrier for the main transit phase between origin and destination

Buyer's Consol

The SOP for a given Vendor / Shipper may require that where their Shipments are LCL, more than one of them are to be consolidated into full containers comprising a mix of goods, but all for that one Shipper; therefore, the cost of the entire container is borne by that Shipper or their Shipper's Client (depending on incoterms)

Agent's Consol

The Agent (SEKO) looks for opportunities to consolidate multiple LCL Shipments, regardless of their Shippers, into full containers. The cost of the entire container is then allocated to each Shipper or Shipper's Client (depending on incoterms) based on the proportion of the space each Shipment is using inside the Container

Origin

A term representing a very broad location of activities, geographically located at or near the Shipper's factory with the freight stations, container yards and ports, in the Shipper's country

Destination

A term representing a very broad location of activities, geographically located at or near the Consignee's delivery warehouses with the freight stations, container yards and ports, in the Consignee's country