Technology is changing rapidly and the freight forwarding sector is feeling the benefits.
In a recent IAG Cargo survey, 70% of freight forwarders expect the rate of technological change to increase in 2020 compared to a year ago, and 81% of freight forwarders believe that technological innovation will have a positive impact on their business.
The global survey of nearly 500 freight forwarders in 47 countries ranked their expectations over the next 12 months and said that increased automation and digitalization were the most important trends in the Freight sector in the near future.
E-commerce growth ranked second with 41% and trade tensions ranked third with 29% for freight forwarders.
Freight forwarders have a global appetite to implement real change in the areas of digitalization and automation, according to IAG Cargo.
The biggest challenge is talent attraction and retention, with 79% of the overall industry’s potential issues. Technological advances may be one of the factors behind the challenge. Emerging technologies will create more than 130 million new jobs by 2022 according to the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs report. The mismatch between technological advances including automation, data management, digital marketing and machine learning, and the skills and experience workers need to develop and exploit these technologies could be a problem that freight forwarders could possibly avoid by using commercially available software; as such, they could achieve potential growth and productivity gains.
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At Distroship, we propose integrated solutions from Marketing & Sales to gain new clients, to Quote & Book to easily process all shipments online, up to Billing & Payment to ensure forwarders get paid, even before they foot expenses. Our powerful SaaS platform is embedded directly in our forwarders’ websites to support their revenue and profit increases.