News / Forwarder benefit as air cargo booking platforms look to integrate AI

© Upeksher Mannapperuma

Digitising air cargo spot-buy rates and integrating artificial intelligence (AI) will enable freight forwarders to use their resources more efficiently – but industry acceptance and adoption still needs improving.

According to Antonia Ambrozy, director of e-bookings growth at WebCargo by Freightos, digitising the buy rate for forwarders is crucial, especially during times of high volatility.

“Our industry is constantly impacted by events that change market dynamics, so relying on real-time data through digital bookings ensures reliability, regardless of external factors,” she said.

Additionally, bridging both contract and spot rates through digital tools is an ideal scenario but as Ms Ambrozy noted, it’s not yet adopted widely.

Matthieu Petot, CargoAI’s CEO, said both airlines and forwarders can benefit with real-time access to rates. Forwarders in particular, were better informed to make decisions quickly, improving their responsiveness to shippers’ demands, crucial for the air freight industry.

“Airlines can benefit from digitising their rates by freeing their operations and sales teams from transactional shipments that would otherwise require a human quotation,” Mr Petot remarked.

“Spot rates are typically falling in that category requiring a fast reply to the shippers and a check on the capacity and rates from the airlines,” he added.

CargoAI has seen significant opportunities for AI integration in this area. It already released an AI plug-in, “CargoCopilot”, allowing forwarders to find and share air freight rates in one-click directly from their mailbox. CargoAi has also detected opportunities with analytics, allowing industry stakeholders to analyse and predict their competitiveness across markets.

Awery Aviation Software meanwhile has been using AI for several years. Its eMagic product is an AI tool used to convert email and text enquiries from various formats and languages into a standard data format.

Ms Ambrozy added: “For a positive customer experience, having a digital front end is not enough. Everything from the booking system to the carrier must be digitised in real-time,” she said.

Experts at WebCargo have recognised the increasing role of AI in the process. As Ms Ambrozy reported, the company is working with customers to understand where AI can be most efficient. One example of AI integration are the  “autofill units,” which allow WebCargo customers to upload files or texts that are automatically translated into the details required to search for rates.

Supposedly, the quickest wins from AI and machine learning are in automation and contextualisation in order to make a real improvement to forwarders’ productivity and win rates. For example, cargo.one uses automation to convert customer emails into quotes, and ingest rates dynamically into rate management systems, so the data is available where it drives most value.

Providing forwarders with more steer around pricing will further help to raise their efficiency and competitive ability. A glance at the cargo.one platform showed a huge potential to apply AI and machine learning around shipment characteristics, forwarder and shipper needs, and the availability of supply options.

Digital sales channels apart from airline’s own booking platforms typically facilitate quotes and bookings based on available prices or contracts.

Radhesh Menon, VP head of strategy and product management – cargo and logistics solutions at IBS Software, believes the concept of true dynamic pricing is still not in place in air cargo, which limits the capability to fully automate and digitise spot rates as part of the booking process.

“Analytics and AI will be the stepping stone towards true dynamic pricing. However, this would depend a lot on industry acceptance of such business practices,” Mr Menon stated.

Further, Mr Menon reckoned a fully digitised experience would make sense if only a small minority of exceptions required manual intervention [eg for price negotiation] – “this is not the case today. While this will likely happen in the future, the pace of adoption remains to be seen,” he commented.

Over the next decade, a more holistic digital connectivity across the entire air cargo ecosystem will emerge. There will likely be greater focus on total end-to-end visibility and a more seamless end-to-end experience for forwarders across most booking platforms.