GT Nexus Inc. has expanded beyond an online reservation marketplace for the shipping industry, announcing Monday its integrated logistics application suite that ties supply-chain execution to order and transportation management.

The GT Nexus Orders suite marks a major expansion of GT Nexus' capabilities for managing the supply chains of importers and exporters, according to officials from the Alameda, Calif.-based company.

The new suite features four applications that model and monitor optimal supply-chain performance -- from purchase order through delivery -- by identifying exceptions as they occur, said Peter Weiss, GT Nexus director of products.

"I will define what events matter to me ... and I will model optimal behavior," Weiss said. "If I'm shipping DVD players ... I know what events I care about and how long each event should take under optimal performance and what the tolerances are. I also know if there's a problem what I want to do about it and who owns it, and I'm going to track to make sure these exceptions are managed to closure."

In addition, the new solution can take details generated by monitoring the supply chain and create an analytics database that identifies cycle times and choke points, such as products taking too long to clear customers or getting stuck at a warehouse too long.

"We apply the value of the product and the cost of capital ... so that you can get actual financial impact of your performance and your service providers' performance," Weiss said.

GT Nexus also offers a suite of applications that support global transportation planning and a suite designed to streamline transportation execution through standardization of schedules, freight booking, and shipment tracking across multiple carriers. These applications are deployed within a private logistics network that connects the customer with all their suppliers and logistics service providers, such as carriers, freight forwarders, and other companies that are involved with international sourcing and transportation of goods.

The new product suite for order and shipment visibility rounds out a well complemented set of applications founded on a common Web-native logistics infrastructure, said Michael Bittner, an analyst at AMR Research Inc. in Boston. GT Nexus has progressed well beyond its roots as an electronic shipping portal established by a group of ocean carriers to offering multienterprise logistics platforms, both public and private, he said.