We live in an era of instant, real-time, self-serve information for just about every aspect of our daily lives, except, oddly enough, for transparency within shipping and logistics processes. For a number of reasons, the current state of visibility in this aspect of business operations remains behind most other industries. The past few years have demonstrated that this is arguably one of the most critical areas that must be improved, but there are some barriers to making that happen.
Currently, some data is readily available to end users at a moment’s notice. But the information customers want to access is very rarely live; it is a snapshot of the state of their cargo at some point in the past. Freight forwarders, third-party logistics providers and ocean carriers have not, broadly speaking, made enough of an effort to modernize their digital interactions. Right now, timely access to key pieces of data is inaccessible to end users unless they communicate with a human, which not only requires effort, but also introduces the possibility of errors or inaccuracies.
Ideally, logistics organizations should be providing this information to their customers in an easily consumable format in a centralized location. At a minimum, customers should be able to rapidly access data about their current and past shipments, review any relevant documentation for their cargo, receive alerts for any potential issues that may affect them and view the reports that matter to their business, all in real-time.
This will take significant investment from the entire transportation industry. Data must be ingested from a huge range of sources, normalized and then provided to customers in a useful way; and that’s just one barrier. But it will be worth the investment in the end, as the businesses who do so will find themselves standing apart in a crowded industry.