Shipping firms start to offer digital booking platforms

[NEW YORK] The shipping industry, which carries 90 per cent of world trade, is finally going digital.

Until recently, if you wanted to send a couple of pallets of television sets from Hong Kong to New York, you had to place your order over the phone with a human on the other end. Those humans make mistakes about 20 per cent of the time, costing US$684 million a year, according to Ocean Audit Inc, which examines invoices for retailers such as Macy's Inc.

To cut this waste, customers and s…