Back to Air Transport IT Review - Issue 1, May 2010
The delivery of paper-free air cargo
By James Fernandez, VP Sales & Marketing
CHAMP Cargosystems
The removal of paper documents from air freight is set to transform the business.
Air cargo has always involved reams of paperwork. However, the industry is rapidly gearing up to Paper-Free Transportation (PFT) - shipping consignments that are either completely paper-less or have a much reduced set of documentation.
Historically, transporting cargo by air has involved air waybills, house waybills, consolidation manifests, invoices, packing lists, certificates of origin, shipper's declaration for dangerous goods, customs declarations for export/import, flight manifests and transfer manifests. Some consignments attract up to 30 paper documents.
As this documentation is owned and managed by multiple stakeholders, getting rid of it requires a pan-industry initiative. This is being led by IATA's e-freight programme.
The complex landscape
Electronic trading in air cargo has been around for many years. IATA Cargo Interchange Message Procedures (CIMP) has been the messaging mainstay for airlines and forwarder customers.
It has not been so straightforward for Customs and the forwarding community. Typically they have had to manage demands from various modes of transport, with UN/EDIFACT as a standard fulfilling the wider 'trade' information exchange. Add in various bespoke message requirements and 'home-grown' XML, and the electronic trading landscape becomes more complex.
The industry has for sometime been looking to CIMP as the standard method of information exchange and its intended replacement is CargoXML (CXML). IATA has a group specifically tasked to define a new standard that supports electronic documents (eDocs).
The Cargo XML Task Force has already defined XML schema for a number of key documents and more are in the pipeline for 2010. Adopting XML not only introduces a technology that is relatively new to air cargo but also brings with it the possibility of changing the ways in which partners interact with each other and the IT solutions they use to manage their businesses.
Paper-free strategies
The removal of paper from air cargo has the potential to be truly transforming. IT vendors will have to adapt their solutions to meet new technology and business process change challenges. CHAMP Cargosystems already recognizes the potential impact on its IT solutions and has paper-free strategies in place to help drive the change forward throughout its portfolio, supporting the diverse needs of the different stakeholders using its systems.
The impacts will be felt throughout the lifecycle of airfreight consignments, from purchase order to booking, freight acceptance to customs reporting and from revenue accounting to record archiving. As people will ensure that the business process changes are managed, it will be technology that helps transform the industry and deliver paper-free as the future industry norm.
More information on IATA e-freight can be found at www.iata.org/whatwedo/cargo/efreight.
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