AFTER two years of global capacity turmoil and attempts at digitalisation, how can airfreight forwarders continue to confidently place their trust in traditional airline supplier practices? asks Nigel Tomkins.
Forwarders are the vital transportation agents who act on behalf of a consignment’s original owner – exporter/importer/shipper/manufacturer/wholesaler etc – and are the conduit to safe, efficient and cost-effective transportation.
That is why their role in global supply chains remains pivotal and critical, even though a big factor in traditional air cargo networks is that forwarders are universally resistant to change.
While we’re at it, can airlines continue to place their trust in short-staffed, under-invested cargo terminal and ramp handlers to keep coming up with the goods? Will these carriers pay the handlers enough money to take them out of the poor-house and enable them to sustain and invest in much-needed new technology systems and training?
In this new air cargo world, will air charter specialists and project-forwarders be happy to place their faith in their trusted suppliers of 20 or 30-plus years, especially as increasing numbers of big logistics companies are defecting to their own wide-body freighter lift (Kuehne + Nagel, CMA CGM, Amazon) for example?
The airfreight paradigm has dramatically shifted, but are these tectonic shifts a good thing?
The same questions may also apply to the current cascade of air cargo digitalisation services. How reliable are these digital arrivistes, especially those that now brazenly list airlines amongst their shareholders? Or those opening up their customers’ private data (let’s call it underwear drawers) to outside stakeholders.
Apart from creating automated processes, do these disruptors actually possess enough real knowledge about how the industry they are supposedly disrupting works?
Is their widespread failure to CLEARLY and SIMPLY explain to their vehemently analogue freight forwarding customers what the principal benefits of digitalisation truly are – and what significant internal changes are expected that will directly affect customers and key members of staff?
Judging by the poor quality of the language used in their press releases, they are still missing this point entirely. For fun, I asked a few random traditional forwarders these specific questions: What is an API? What is meant by SaaS? RAD? Ai? Their answers were beyond humorous.
From an industry previously shrouded in secrecy and bespoke face-to-face ‘personalised’ arrangements, how will the new data-friendly ‘open’ air cargo environment emerge in the coming years? Having only various parts of the airfreight supply chain digitalised – such as e-bookings, capacity availability and even online payments (another minefield) – still falls hugely short of a truly fully-digitalised paperless air cargo business.
Most airfreight shipments crossing the world are accompanied by stacks of legal paper documents; the vast majority of truck services (many of which are owner-driver businesses) are not even close to being digitalised; national Customs/border control departments remain locked in a Dickensian past; and the whole shebang is populated by a workforce with little or no IT knowledge or passion for change.
What is emerging is a partly digitalised airfreight supply chain. How much use is that? It’s a bicycle with no saddle, or a fir tree at the Royal Academy (a pine in the arts).
By contrast, airline passengers can today, on their laptops, reserve an airline seat, book and pay for an electronic flight ticket (along with car-hire, hotels, meals and other add-ons), and then bring absolutely no paperwork to the airport.
Back to the main point of this blog: are air cargo’s forwarder and shipper customers likely to place their trust in the integrity of any of these renegade actors?
So many questions. Not many answers.
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