Digital transformation has changed the competitive dynamics of various industries, and the logistics industry is not an exception. In particular, digital forwarding has grown for the last decade through a digital platform that offers a broad range of services. In 2024, digital forwarders will encounter more competitive situations with the following keywords: acceleration in digitization, agility for volatile variables and increase in efficiency.
First and most importantly, digital forwarding matters more than ever. The COVID-19 pandemic that brought enormous supply chain disruptions and remarkable growth in e-commerce has laid bare the need for digitalization in logistics.
Several promising technological trends have shown huge potential to accelerate digital forwarding services as well. The evidence for going further in digital terms is clear, based on the growing trend of digital forwarding market over the next few years and the digital transformation of traditional logistics powerhouses along with digital forwarding startups.
Second, the unexpected comes as no surprise at all. The year 2024 will call for more resilience on volatile variables like the closure of the Suez Canal, geographical unrest, port disruptions and union strikes.
Being more agile than ever is critical in many aspects: realizing visualized tracking information in real time, detecting risks in advance, identifying bottlenecks in shipments, planning future tasks, quickly responding to disruptions and avoiding excessive charges like demurrage or detention.
Finally, generative AI (GenAI), the buzzworthy technology that is rapidly gaining acceptance, will lead digital forwarders into a fresh wave of transformation. Once embedded in the customer service functions, for example, its natural language understanding feature will be capable of handling customer queries within seconds.
By lowering the barriers to the entry into digital forwarding services, GenAI will offer a path forward to achieve productivity and efficiency as well, far beyond the capacities of earlier technologies like chatbots.