INCREMENTAL forward steps towards digitalisation made by the air cargo industry are starting to pay off, observes Thelma Etim. There is no doubt that, in many areas of its business, the airfreight industry is still grappling with the burden of paper airwaybills (AWBs), the accompanying pouch and old-generation ground handling operations, such as airside ramp transport and road feeder services, as well as so many other politically complex matters such as analogue Customs agencies. It is not surprising that any digital changes embraced by carriers and others are already showing benefits. "The development and implementation of next-generation technologies, rapid advances in consumer technology, increasing the shift to cloud computing, the utilisation of internet of things (IoT), big data and machine learning (ML) to collect and analyse large amounts of data – are all currently transforming processes in the [airline] industry," an expansive report by consultancy Frost and Sullivan observes. It predicts the airline digitalisation market will earn more than US$35.42billion

Digitisation and its futuristic approach is taking the global business landscape by storm and air cargo industry is not an exception. More than being physical, it is a mindset change. The winners will act now by forgoing resistance and embracing technology! Rewind just six or seven years and you will find the air cargo industry happily transporting cargo believing it has mastered the art, until a wave of technology roiled and disrupted the well set standards. In due course, the consumer base also became more aware and their rising expectations gave major goals to the industry to not only track and trace but also make the entire supply chain leaner.