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The collaborative process of ‘e-booking’.
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How will this streamline the current logistics process?
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Putting digitization to the test.
The talk of a more digitized air freight industry is becoming increasingly tangible. Freightos, an online cargo market has partnered with Lufthansa, a German airline, in an attempt to create a digital portal where freight forwarders can find rates and book space for air cargo shipments almost instantaneously. This ‘real-time’ feature is made possible through collaborative efforts and a full integration of Lufthansa’s API services and Freightos’ analogous interface, WebCargo. This new system was made preliminarily accessible back in July, 2018.
Freight Forwarders are able to use this platform by accessing a contracted price and securing open aircraft space in one fully integrated application. If air freight capacity is limited or unavailable, a manual override is made accessible to inquire online ad-hoc pricing.
While this portal only touches one mode of transportation in the supply chain industry, it is a step in an automated direction, nonetheless. WebCargo already owns the world’s largest rate database in the air cargo lane, only now with the addition of ‘real-time’ pricing. Peter Gerber, CEO of Lufthansa Cargo concurs, stating, “Through Lufthansa Cargo web service, we are driving the digitization of our industry to offer our customers and partners a convenient and fast digital interface to our products and services.” The overall feedback within the air freight industry has been positive with words and notions alluding to a more streamlined process involving information flow, quoting, booking, consignments, and shipments. “Everyone’s talking about air cargo digitization but for most, it’s just talk. The result of on-demand booking is that goods will move faster, with up to a day shaved off transit time, and tens of dollars saved per shipment.” [Zvi Schreiber, Freightos founder and CEO]
Freightos acknowledges the expansion of the platform globally in the coming months with European markets being serviced first.
Instant access is quickly becoming an industry standard expected by customers. In an attempt to keep up with demand, automation is increasingly pressurizing freight forwarders and supply chain management companies on a global scale. The supply chain of the future is beginning to transition to the supply chain of today.
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