Eye on freight customers, Goyal launches Railways business development portal

Railway Minister Piyush Goyal launched the freight business development portal, a portal designed to replace physical processes with online ones to minimise the need of human-to-human interaction. Several customers, while welcoming the move, said that it will help them use rail mode seamlessly.

The Indian Railways is benchmarking this portal with other railways globally to make it the best, the Minster said.

The Minister asked customers of the Railways to provide feedback on the same to make it more interactive.

This year, the Railways has set a target to load more freight and earn more freight revenue than last year. Also, despite a drop in coal movement, the Railways has been increasing the load of other commodities, closing the gap in the process.

Earlier, Tata Steel CEO TV Narendran asked if some large customers could be allowed to integrate the Railways’ freight operations information system (FOIS) with their own ERP. Such a move will provide Tata Steel’s customers greater visibility, said Narendran.

Business development

For customers new to rail, the business development portal guides them to search the most suitable terminal with detail of various terminal facilities and logistics services available, assisting them to choose the right wagon, presenting the expected charges and estimated time for their planned freight transportation. A new customer can register on this portal and place demand for wagons.

The personalised dashboard of freight business portal provides customers a view with their business in railways, outstanding indents, on-run consignments, status of various interactions and facility to apply for various services and raising concerns, among others.

Customers also get to know about discount schemes, diversion, rebooking, demurrage and wharfage waivers, stacking permissions. They can also get to know about rake allotments and pendency or maturity of indents at various freight terminals.

The website also has specific pages for commodities such as coal, minerals, foodgrain, flour and pulses, cement and clinker, chemical manure, iron and steel, petroleum products, container services and automobile, according to the official release.