The pricing system that worked five years ago rarely matches the customer speed expected today.
Tuesday afternoon. A new request lands in the commercial team's inbox: an OEM customer wants pricing for the next two sailings — 12 excavators, 8 wheel loaders, 17 SUVs, 4 buses. Routed Bremerhaven → Zeebrugge → Southampton → Gemlik → Derince. Flexible delivery window. Reply needed today.
The request is straightforward enough on paper. What it triggers internally is not.
Before a quote can be sent, the commercial team needs to verify:
- Vessel feasibility. Can the tracked cargo go on the available decks? Are the ramp load limits adequate? Is there sufficient high-clearance space for the wheel loaders? Can we lift the hoistable decks to give the buses the 4.2-metre clearance they need without choking out the lane metres needed for the SUVs?
- Allocation. Is the space already reserved for OEM contracts? Is there forecasted higher-yield cargo later in the rotation that would be displaced?
- Pricing. Contract rates or spot? BAF adjustments? Port congestion surcharges in Gemlik this month? Deck protection scheduling for the heavy tracked cargo?
- Operations. Port sequence impact? Discharge complexity in Derince? Risk of rollover if a sailing fills?
- Profitability. Revenue per lane metre versus alternatives? Voyage margin impact? Is the next sailing actually more profitable for this cargo mix?
- Self-service path. Can the customer or their agent quote this directly via the operator's portal under contract terms, or does the cargo mix and routing require commercial coordination?
Five teams, five sets of questions, and one customer waiting for an answer. This is why RoRo CPQ is significantly harder than container booking — and why so many operators have ended up running their commercial process from spreadsheets, vessel drawings, email threads, and the institutional memory of a few senior commercial operators.
Why custom-built pricing modules cap commercial speed
The pattern is consistent across mid-to-large RoRo and PCTC operators. Pricing lives in one of three places, often in some combination:
Legacy internal pricing module
Built when the fleet was smaller. Maintained by a handful of specialists, with new requirements bolted on through years of incremental work.
Generic CPQ platform
Salesforce CPQ or similar, acquired to systematise the commercial process — but never quite modelled RoRo cargo correctly, so the actual pricing logic ended up in adjacent spreadsheets.
Spreadsheet ecosystem
Sometimes 200+ files, owned by senior commercial operators who carry the rate matrices, surcharge tables, contract exceptions, and trade-lane adjustments in their heads as much as in the files.
Each version works. That is exactly why each version persists.
What none of them do well is scale. The volume grows, the OEM mix shifts, the most experienced people transition out of the role, and leadership wants standardisation across regions and cargo classes.
The system that was the company's commercial backbone becomes its commercial ceiling
Concretely, the friction shows up as:
- Quote latency. A request that should take minutes takes hours, because the calculation lives in a place that only one person fully understands.
- Surcharge sprawl. New surcharge categories (port congestion fees, regulatory changes, new OEM-specific structures) get added through Excel formulas or hardcoded modules — and updating them across the company means a coordination project.
- Inconsistent pricing across regions. Different commercial teams develop different conventions for the same cargo class. Margin pressure accumulates silently.
- Tribal knowledge concentration. Project cargo and complex quotes route through three or four people who know how to think about all the dimensions at once. When they are unavailable, decisions queue.
- Disconnect between quote and outcome. The voyage profitability that should validate or correct the pricing assumptions is reconstructed after discharge, not used to inform the next quote.
Custom build vs CargoVerse CPQ
| Custom-built pricing module | CargoVerse CPQ |
|---|---|
| Price list updates require IT tickets, dev cycles, or spreadsheet versioning | Centralised price list and surcharge management across all cargo classes |
| Surcharge logic hardcoded or scattered across spreadsheets | Configurable surcharge logic per cargo class, trade lane, and customer |
| Complex quotes coordinated by phone, email, and meeting | Built-in Microsoft Teams workflow with drawings and cargo descriptions in-thread |
| Tribal knowledge concentrated in senior commercial operators | Documented, repeatable workflow that scales beyond key people |
| Rate matrices versioned through Excel filename conventions | Quote versioning and approval workflows in the system itself |
| Quote-to-margin reconstruction post-voyage | Quote-to-voyage profitability tracked in real time |
| Agent quoting handled separately or off-platform | Agent portal for white-label quoting with sales commission management |
The contrast is not that custom pricing systems are obsolete. It is that their structure makes them harder to change, harder to share, and harder to scale — which over time becomes a commercial cost, not just an IT cost.
Quote at the speed your customer expects
The customer side of this gap is what matters commercially. A customer who needs a price today does not wait for the operator's internal process to converge. They call someone else.
CargoVerse CPQ is built around the inverse premise: pricing data lives in the same operational model as voyage planning, allocation, and contract structures. A request lands, and the system can already see the relevant schedule, capacity, applicable contract terms, current surcharge structures, and historical pricing for similar cargo on similar lanes.
For unambiguous requests — contracted customer, standard cargo, plenty of headroom — the response is in minutes, sometimes end-to-end automated against the standard tariff. The agent can confirm to the customer the same day, often on the same call.
For complex requests — mixed cargo, project work, non-standard surcharges, or contested capacity — the speed advantage is different. The system does not pretend that the human decision is gone. What changes is that the human decision now happens in front of the same operational picture, with the relevant data already attached.
For project cargo specifically, CargoVerse includes a Microsoft Teams workflow for cross-functional pricing — commercial, pricing, and operations can collaborate on a single quote with drawings, cargo descriptions, and historical references in the same thread. The senior commercial operator who used to be the bottleneck for every complex quote becomes a contributor in a documented workflow, not the routing point.
That distinction matters for scale. When the most experienced commercial operator takes holiday, the quoting workflow continues — at a slightly slower pace, but without queueing the entire backlog.
What CargoVerse CPQ does today
The platform is the synthesis of three customer installations on the CPQ side, now generalised into a productised SaaS offering. What is live in the platform today:
Contract and pricing fundamentals
- Contract-based pricing for RoRo and PCTC operators — per customer, trade lane, and cargo class
- Spot pricing for ad-hoc rate requests — including standard-tariff automation for unambiguous quotes
- Surcharge logic for RoRo cargo — high-and-heavy, breakbulk, and automotive cargo classes
- Rate matrices per cargo class and trade lane — multi-currency support with configurable FX handling
- Volume-tier pricing and structured discounts — per trade, cargo class, and customer
Commercial workflow
- Quote versioning and approval workflows — full audit trail across pricing decisions
- Historical quote database — analysable across customers, lanes, and time for benchmarking and pricing analysis
- Quote-to-booking handoff — connected commercial-to-operational flow within one system
- Quote-to-voyage-profitability tracking — pricing decisions linked directly to the voyage outcomes they shape
- Cargo-type-specific pricing logic — a BMW X5, a Caterpillar excavator, and a 14-metre agricultural trailer are priced against their actual operational profiles, not generic units
Cross-functional collaboration and ecosystem
- Microsoft Teams collaboration for project-cargo pricing — pricing, commercial, and operations work the same quote with drawings, cargo descriptions, and historical references in one thread
- Agent portal for white-label quoting — agents can quote with their own brand and managed sales commission structure
- Cross-functional decision flow — built-in routing for quotes that need pricing, operations, and commercial alignment
Expanding through 2026: the agent portal experience continues to mature, additional automation layers for standard-tariff workflows are in development.
This is a deliberately concrete list. What you read here is what an operator can use today.
The case against the custom-built pricing module
The case for a custom pricing build is clear. You know your business better than any vendor. You can encode the trade-lane exceptions, the customer-specific surcharge structures, and the historical pricing conventions exactly as they actually work. And in many cases, the internal team has been doing it for years.
The case against is what happens over time.
A custom pricing module is a maintenance burden by default. New surcharge categories — port congestion, regulatory changes, OEM-specific structures — get implemented through whoever knows the system best. The team that built it leaves, gets reorganised, or becomes the bottleneck for every new requirement. (The most important system in your company might be a person describes that pattern.)
Generic CPQ tools — Salesforce CPQ and similar — solve the maintenance dimension, but rarely model RoRo cargo correctly. They were built for products with predictable dimensions and predictable surcharge profiles, and they treat shipping cargo as if it were the same kind of thing. The result is a system that handles the easy quotes elegantly and falls back to spreadsheets for everything else. (You are not a container line with a ramp makes the broader version of this argument.)
CargoVerse CPQ aims at the middle. RoRo-native data model carried by the vendor; productised maintenance and shared roadmap across multiple operators; configurability where it matters (price lists, surcharge structures, contract terms, approval workflows) without the dev-cycle queue.
Built on Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Azure
CargoVerse runs on the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Power Platform and Microsoft Azure. For commercial teams already working in Microsoft 365 (Teams, Outlook, Excel, SharePoint), this means a short integration story — and a foundation that is secure by default, modern in its identity and integration model, and ready for the AI capabilities now standard in enterprise software.
The choice of platform also matters specifically for pricing workflows. The Teams collaboration that powers complex-cargo quoting works because CargoVerse lives in the same identity and document-handling model your commercial team already uses every day. There is no separate login, no separate file system, no parallel notification stream.
Cartagena AS has been a Microsoft enterprise partner since 2003. CargoVerse CPQ is the result of three customer installations on this foundation, generalised into a productised SaaS offering for RoRo and PCTC operators.
How we approach a conversation about fit
We do not lead with a demo. We lead with a conversation about your commercial operation.
Operators differ. The right answer for a global PCTC carrier consolidating four legacy pricing systems is different from the right answer for a regional RoRo operator who has outgrown a single internal build. Some operators are best served by a phased CargoVerse CPQ adoption that keeps the existing pricing engine running alongside, with CargoVerse handling the quote-to-voyage-profitability layer. Others are best served by a full CPQ migration over six to twelve months.
We will tell you which one we think you are, with reasons. If CargoVerse CPQ is the right fit for what you need, we will show you exactly how it works. If it is not — for cost reasons, for timing reasons, or because what you have actually works well enough — we will say so. We would rather not start a relationship by overpromising it.
See how your operation would run
in CargoVerse.
Walk through your pricing, booking and voyage flow — in one system. 30 minutes. No slides. Live system.
Thank you — we'll be in touch.
Expect a meeting invitation from our team within one business day.
Frequently asked questions
How does CargoVerse CPQ integrate with our existing pricing system?
CargoVerse CPQ can run as the full pricing platform, or it can be adopted in phases. For operators with an existing pricing system that works, we typically integrate at the boundary — CargoVerse handles the quote-to-voyage layer (quote generation, allocation, profitability tracking) while the legacy pricing engine continues to manage contract rates and surcharge structures. Over time, the pricing logic can migrate into CargoVerse as well, on the operator's timeline.
Can we run a phased adoption?
Yes. Phased adoption is the more common pattern. A typical phasing: quote-to-booking integration first, then contract and spot pricing, then surcharge logic and rate matrices, then agent portal and white-label quoting.
How does CargoVerse handle complex project cargo where multiple teams need to be involved?
CargoVerse includes a Microsoft Teams workflow for cross-functional pricing. When a quote needs commercial, pricing, and operations input, all three teams work the same quote with drawings, cargo descriptions, and historical references in one thread. The senior commercial operator who used to be the bottleneck becomes a contributor in a documented workflow.
How does the agent portal work?
The agent portal lets agents quote under their own brand or as a white-label of the operator, with managed sales commission structure. Agents can configure quotes against the operator's contract terms and surcharge logic without seeing internal pricing — and the operator retains full visibility and audit trail across all quotes generated through the channel.
What about multi-currency and FX handling?
CargoVerse CPQ supports multi-currency pricing with configurable FX handling. Rate matrices can be maintained in different currencies per trade lane, with FX conversion applied per quote based on the operator's policy.
How does pricing data feed voyage profitability?
Quote-to-voyage profitability is one of the most operationally useful capabilities in the platform. Pricing decisions are linked directly to the voyage outcomes they shape — so the commercial team can see, in real time, how a particular quote is performing against actual cost and revenue. The historical quote database makes this analysis available across customers, lanes, and time.
Is CargoVerse CPQ ready for AI-driven pricing optimization?
CargoVerse focuses AI capabilities where they improve commercial clarity: standard-tariff automation for unambiguous rate requests, surcharge anomaly detection across customer and trade-lane patterns, and pattern analysis across the historical quote database. The platform foundation is built on Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Azure, which provides the AI capabilities operators expect to leverage now and over the coming years.