CargoWise vs IBM Sterling

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Our analysts compared CargoWise vs IBM Sterling based on data from our 400+ point analysis of Supply Chain Management Software, user reviews and our own crowdsourced data from our free software selection platform.

CargoWise Software Tool
IBM Sterling Software Tool

Product Basics

CargoWise is a single-platform software solution that centralizes logistics operations on a global database for business continuity, security and scalability. It enables organizations to optimize their processes across all freight modes, borders and regulatory boundaries.

Its robust integration interfaces help streamline processes and simplify global connections. It allows flexible integrations with government and third-party providers, customers, partners and more to boost efficiency and productivity. Companies can optimize quote-to-booking procedures, monitor job shipments and make informed decisions with real-time data visibility.
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IBM Sterling is an open, integrated platform that leverages advanced technologies like AI and blockchain to connect with the supplier ecosystem. It provides real-time insights, end-to-end visibility and recommended measures to transform interruptions into customer engagement, profit and growth opportunities.

It offers support for supplier, inventory and order management. Users can build smarter business networks using business process improvement, supply chain visibility, supplier collaboration, manufacturing solutions, order fulfillment and retail solutions. It also supports B2B collaboration to fulfill ongoing business demands, minimize complexity and reduce costs.
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Product Insights

  • Accelerate Supply Chain Efficiency: Ensure data quality with master data validation tools. Get access to validated addresses to make accurate delivery and routing decisions. Includes advanced spatial technology, autocomplete function, and background address, registration code and phone validation functionalities. 
  • Automate Parcel Transport: Streamline shipping procedures throughout the enterprise. Includes multi-carrier parcel processing, smart routing, shipping documentation, regulatory compliance and rate shopping capabilities. 
  • Manage Ecommerce Operations: Offers a centralized platform for the entire international ecommerce fulfillment supply chain. Improve data quality, increase productivity and ensure trade compliance to facilitate reliable logistics operations. Provides origin depot, shipper and destination portals. 
  • Simplify Rates and Contracts: A searchable live database provides multi-modal rate visibility and control. Analyze buy and sell rates to quickly produce quotes using automated cost and revenue calculations. Provides functionalities like a rate selector, auto-costing and auto-rating, and direct carrier connections. 
  • Seamless Shipments: Leverage integrated sailing schedules, container control, automated data exchange and more to manage bookings and bills of lading. Provides container management and tracking, bookings, vessels allocations and multi-currency accounting modules. 
  • Maintain Compliance: Ensure seamless shipment movement using geocompliance tools and maintain trade compliance with real-time updates and the latest regulations. Automated accounting processes simplify international transactions and operations. Offers security screening, invoice automation, reporting, automatic tax engine and multi-language communications. 
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  • Evolve Business Processes: Maintain business continuity, reduce operational silos, respond to market disruptions and mitigate risks with intelligent workflows. Improve interactions between people, data and processes through its experts and reduce inventory costs with process improvements. 
  • Improve Visibility: Supply chain stakeholders can access data related to inventory, order processes, delivery and potential disruptions. Improves customer service, assists with regulatory directives and mitigates interruptions affecting supplier inventory levels and product delivery with advanced insights. 
  • Supplier Collaboration: Streamline collaboration to drive efficiencies, increase supplier satisfaction, resolve disruptions for procure-to-pay transactions and order-to-cash with supplier collaboration solutions and global business networks. Quickly respond to supplier issues with embedded AI capabilities like cycle time prediction, anomaly detection and next-best-action recommendations. 
  • Deliver Customer Promises: Track orders from inception to delivery, manage data and processes and gain visibility into all orders throughout channels. Offers various solutions that include order management, order fulfillment, inventory management and digital store operations. 
  • Enhance Manufacturing Management: Innovate supply chain management by transforming outdated processes, uncovering hidden insights and delivering superior customer experience with automation, IoT, AI and blockchain. It helps avoid disruptions, improve visibility, respond quickly and streamline planning and optimization. 
  • Retail Technology Services: Evolve the shopping experience with advanced retail solutions for fulfilling digital demands. Revitalize customer engagement by delivering omnichannel marketing messages and offers tailored to the customer base. Minimize disruptions to the supply chain through various retail technology solutions. 
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  • Forwarding Management: Offers a single platform to perform logistics transactions and handle freight operations. Leverage advanced technologies, automation and analytics to gain deep visibility, optimize supply chain and make data-driven decisions. 
    • Freight Forwarding: Automate and optimize forwarding procedures, such as capacity planning, rate management, vessel booking and last-mile tracking. 
    • Schedules and Bookings: Increase accuracy and save time using an online feed of flight and vessel information for air and sea ports. 
    • Container Freight Station: Improve and streamline complex container and depot processes from a single, integrated platform. 
    • Electronic Port Connections: Direct electronic connections to carriers, agents and ports across the world’s busiest ports helps save time and money. 
  • Customs Management: Create, manage and clear import and export customs declarations globally while operating within the law. Minimize cargo delays, fees, fines and inspections. 
    • Customs Declarations: Prevent costly compliance mistakes and ensure smooth goods movement across borders through electronic import and export customs clearance processes. 
    • BorderWise: Offers multiple books about trade legislation and reference materials in one location to avoid penalty risks, delays and reputation. 
    • Bonded Warehouse Integration: Track, manage and maintain inventory levels with greater control and compliance by integrating customs brokerage and warehouse procedures. 
    • Denied Party Screening: Stay informed and compliant through smooth screening processes for shippers, consignees, client contacts and ocean vessels. 
  • Monitor Freight Movements: View cargo status in real time. Improve decision-making capabilities and gain supply chain transparency with automation and visibility tools. 
    • Container Automation: Automate workflows, manage exceptions and eliminate manual operations from a global, integrated platform. 
    • Tracking and Events: Combine a network of agents and partners to regular procedures with the tools required in shipments. 
    • Air Waybill Automation: Merge data streams from the entire supply chain and develop a customized global data-set of locations and events information. 
  • Enterprise Operations Management: Consolidate and streamline business processes using enterprise tools. Includes features like accounting, human resources manager, customer relationship manager, workflow and productivity, eDocs and customer ticket portal. 
  • Optimize Transport Performance: Streamline order-to-delivery processes and proactively plan capacity, loads and routes. Real-time alerts and ETA updates help improve customer service. 
    • Asset-Based Transport Management: Use on-the-road data and status updates to monitor drivers, equipment and consignments. It helps improve service levels and minimize transportation costs. 
    • Non-Asset Based Transport Management: Access multiple carrier connections quickly to enhance shipments across modes and routes worldwide. Simplifies multi-carrier rating, shipping and tracking. 
  • Warehouse Visibility and Control: Manage inbound and outbound cargo using a warehouse management system. Track inventory movements and use transit facilities to accurately receive, process and dispatch packages. 
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  • Business Network: Offers cloud-based and security-rich connectivity with suppliers, partners and customers. Ensure timely order deliveries with real-time intelligence and recommendations through AI capabilities. Provides multi-party visibility of digital events throughout the supply chain via blockchain, empowering transparency and trust. 
  • Food Trust: Connects participants through an immutable, permissioned and shared record of processing details, food provenance, transaction data and more through its collaborative network. Trace the location and status of food products, including essential details like multi-ingredient and farm-store view. 
  • Visibility Insights: Optimize performance by correlating data from disparate and siloed systems, creating digital playbooks and capturing organizational knowledge. Accelerate time to value, get intelligent insights, manage inventory and mitigate disruptions to meet demand through the inventory control tower. Supply chain intelligence services help boost data integration by developing purpose-built control towers using a control tower solution blueprint. 
  • TradeLens Platform: Gain access to a supply chain and logistics network with over half of the global container shipping volume data coverage through an interconnected supply chain partners system. Every shipment party can access their information and all transactions’ audit trails using its permission matrix. Offers services and apps developed by TradeLens and third parties to accelerate innovation and value creation. 
  • Trust Your Supplier: Identify, onboard and manage qualified suppliers through a blockchain-based solution. It helps expedite supplier onboarding, lower procurement operating costs, reduce compliance risk, speed new supplier assessments, access verified data and streamline insight sharing. 
  • Business Transaction Intelligence: Provides insights into B2B transaction lifecycles. Offers multi-part shared transaction visibility and empowers users with real-time visibility and self-service. Prevents potential risks by giving discrepancy alerts on B2B transaction anomalies. 
  • Transaction Manager: Automates manual B2B transactions and helps save money and time by cutting costs, reducing errors and elevating user satisfaction with customers, non-EDI suppliers and other trading partners. Gain unified visibility throughout supply chain partner transactions and onboard non-technical trading partners. 
  • Document Conversion Services: Converts manual transactions and non-structured documents like email, pdf and fax into EDI or other structured formats. Provides various features, including advanced OCR to read images, customized exception handling, multiple language support and ICR technology to recognize handwriting. 
  • Order Management: Ensures omnichannel order fulfillment by combining inventory and delivery visibility, multichannel order aggregation and service availability in a single platform. It helps customize monitoring and alerts, take immediate actions on capacity, deliver order promises with intelligent fulfillment and use reverse logistics to track inventory. 
  • Fulfillment Optimizer with Watson: Enhance existing order management systems and minimize cost-to-serve with cognitive analytics engine. Retailers can utilize store capacity, balance protecting margins and meet delivery expectations, increasing profits. 
  • Inventory Visibility: Explore product highlights and find use-case specific solutions. Users can personalize dashboards, balance inventory across channels, track inventory velocity, enable drop shipping, leverage autoscaling, get real-time views with the Cassandra database, Akamai gateways and more. 
  • Store Engagement: Gain inventory, customer and order data view through an intuitive user-interface, accessible from mobile devices and sales counters. Provides cross-sell and up-sell recommendations, enables flexible fulfillment options, helps standardize processes for task and inventory management and manages returns throughout channels using purpose-built tools. 
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Product Ranking

#116

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Supply Chain Management Software

#19

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Supply Chain Management Software

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User Sentiment Summary

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Great User Sentiment 47 reviews
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84%
of users recommend this product

IBM Sterling has a 'great' User Satisfaction Rating of 84% when considering 47 user reviews from 5 recognized software review sites.

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4.1 (38)
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5.0 (1)
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4.6 (5)
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4.5 (2)
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4.0 (1)

Synopsis of User Ratings and Reviews

End-to-End Visibility: Provides comprehensive tracking and management of goods throughout the entire supply chain, from the point of origin to the final destination.
Global Trade Compliance: Includes built-in tools that help businesses navigate the complexities of international trade regulations, ensuring compliance with constantly evolving legal requirements.
Data Accuracy: Offers upfront data verification tools that help maintain data integrity, reducing errors and improving the reliability of information used for decision-making.
Centralized Platform: Consolidates all logistics operations into a single, unified system, streamlining workflows and reducing the need for multiple software solutions.
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Integration: It supports integration with multiple external systems, as noted by 88% of reviewers who mention integration.
Customization: It offers highly customizable tools and features, as observed by 50% of the users who refer to reports.
Ease of Use: It offers a flexible platform that is easy to use, manage and modify, as noted by all the reviewers specifying ease of use.
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Customer Support: CargoWise users frequently report poor customer service experiences. Support is often limited after the sales process, and resolving issues can be slow due to a cumbersome incident reporting system.
Pricing Volatility: The pricing structure for CargoWise is often criticized for its lack of transparency and unpredictable changes. Initial discounts may be enticing, but frequent price revisions and unexpected charges make budgeting and cost management challenging.
Workflow Inefficiencies: Some users find the workflow processes in CargoWise to be cumbersome and inefficient. Promised updates and new features are sometimes delayed, which can cause frustration and hinder productivity.
Unexpected System Costs: Despite promises of cost savings, some businesses experience escalating system costs with CargoWise. The lack of clear guidance on achieving the advertised cost reductions adds to this frustration.
Performance Issues: Occasional reports of the software being laggy can negatively impact daily operations and create inefficiencies for users who rely on a responsive system.
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Learning Curve: It is complicated to understand and involves a steep learning curve, as stated by 57% of the users who report learning curve.
Interface: Over 50% of reviewers that mentioned the interface stated that the interface is not user-friendly and intuitive.
Resource-Intensive: It consumes a large amount of system resources, as observed by all reviewers referring to system resource utilization.
Implementation: Around 67% of the users who specified implementation report that the deployment and implementation process is cumbersome.
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Is CargoWise really so wise when it comes to meeting user needs? Recent reviews paint a mixed picture of this supply chain management software. On one hand, users rave about its comprehensive functionality, highlighting its integrated approach to managing freight forwarding operations, from tracking and tracing to customs clearance and accounting. This end-to-end solution, as one user pointed out, brings everything under one umbrella, streamlining complex workflows and boosting productivity. The software's configurability and flexibility also receive praise, with customers appreciating the ability to tailor the system to their specific needs. However, this apparent strength is countered by a recurring theme in negative reviews: CargoWise's steep learning curve and lackluster customer support. Users report that the software is difficult to master, with training materials deemed insufficient for navigating its more technical aspects. This challenge is compounded by what many describe as abysmal post-sales support, characterized by slow response times, unhelpful incident reports, and a general lack of readily available assistance. The pricing policy is another sore point, often described as unpredictable and frustratingly opaque. Users express concerns over frequent revisions, hidden charges, and escalating costs that belie the promised savings. This lack of transparency, coupled with the reportedly poor customer service, creates a sense of distrust and frustration among those who feel locked into a system that doesn't deliver on its initial promises. In conclusion, CargoWise seems like a powerful tool for freight forwarding, but one that requires significant investment in terms of both time and money. Its comprehensive features and integration capabilities make it suitable for large enterprises with dedicated IT and training resources to navigate its complexities and absorb potential cost overruns. However, smaller businesses or those seeking a more user-friendly and transparent experience might want to explore alternative solutions.

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IBM Sterling is a flexible and easy-to-use supply chain suite that helps its customers build dynamic and smarter business networks. It has a highly customizable platform and supports comprehensive integration capabilities with various external systems. Many reviewers have noted that it does not have an intuitive user interface, and the implementation process can be cumbersome. It involves a steep learning curve, and users find it complicated to understand. It also consumes a large amount of system resources, making it slow sometimes.

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