While the past year has been good to the air freight industry, the pressure to improve the back-end performance and to digitalize their operations have never been more acute.
With the airlines leading the changes in the industry, traditional air freight forwarders will lose out business to the ones that offer faster, more transparent and wider range of services, if they do not follow the suite.
Digital possibilities for your air freight business
Despite huge advancement in IT industries, the adoption rates for digital technologies among the medium and small players in the air freight forwarding sector is pretty slow. The initial investment costs and learning curves are critical bottlenecks, understandably.
Here are six possible ways that digitization can help your air freight business right now, even if you are not ready to go fully in.
Online Rates & booking
While passenger tickers can be bought from the multiple channels which provide real time booking and rate confirmations, air freighters have been lagging behind for a long time now. This can mostly attributed to the fact that the industry is still largely paper-based and lacks transparency severely.
A platform enabled virtual booking portal supported by digitization of paper documents and dynamic pricing will improve the cost effectiveness as well as the quality of customer interactions.
Digital payments
Electronic or Digital payments have been the norm in the other industries for a while now and it is surprising that the logistics industry has to still play a catch up.
Enabling a digital payment option would go a long way in simplifying payment processes and cycles and improving operational efficiencies. Digitization of the paper documents and the ability to access the real-time information would be critical to streamline these online payments.
With a slew of payment aggregators available who facilitate business and normal transactions, it is a no-brainer that the digital payment facilities would become critical in the days to come.
Trade financing
The unexpected changes in the socio-economic scenario in the last year has impacted the capital and cash flow of business tremendously. Trade financing is not a new concept, except that the importance has risen manifold recently.
While commercial banks have been providing with letter of credits and even supply chain finances for years now, digitizing the documents can smoothen and expediate the process. Providing the documents, even electronically, on time is more than a hygiene factor.
Finance & Accounting
Despite the obvious value of digitization, many freight forwarders are still largely paper-dependent. This invariably leads to manual errors and missing data issues. Further multiple data entry points means more chances for disputes that might take months to reconcile.
Streamlining payment, invoicing, and reconciliation process by digitizing the documents is one of the basic advantage in adopting an air freight management software.
For instance, a workflow based software like Elliptia can help you minimize the chances of data entry errors. It also acts as a single point of data entry and information would directly flow into your accounting system, thereby increasing your operational efficiency and better use of your back-end resources.
Track & trace
Modern supply chain system largely depends on interconnection between various stakeholders in the industry. A collaborative transport platform l(ike CHAMP) allows tracking the shipment during the various stages of transportation and helps to ensure the cargo is safely delivered.
Tracking and tracing of goods and documents also helps in better scheduling their production and shipment plans. Any bottlenecks in the system can be resolved or avoided altogether to improve efficiency.
Air cargo management software like Elliptia is a good starting point to be able to interconnect with such an external platform.
Customs
As next-day shipments becoming the new norm, every minute shipment spends on the customs for a clearance comes at a huge premium. Compliance with country-specific custom requirements and shipping laws can seem daunting but it doesn’t have to be with an integrated freight forwarding software.
Such a software will prompt you to supply with precise information required by the authorities for specific country or port. The system will thus help you to avoid costly mistakes, especially where each error can become a penalty or worse – your shipment be seized.
All these can be a near-future reality even if you are SME air freight forwarder, but it all starts with simply digitizing your papers and using a software to handle your daily freight management.
Digital solutions are a crucial element in helping you join the digital revolution in the air freight industry. Just drop in a mail to us to support your digital transformation.
