During Multimodal 2018, a panel of air freight experts agreed on the importance of everyone in the supply chain working together to find the best solutions. A session entitled ‘Developing KPIs for air freight shippers’ focused on the work of Global Shippers Forum and Cargo iQ, an IATA interest group, to develop a route map with 19 agreed steps against which performance can be measured.

“In the cargo community we use a lot of industry standard acronyms, but does that give clarity to the shippers?” asked Ariaen Zimmerman, Executive Director of Cargo iQ, further explaining the need to speak a common language and increase shipment control in order to optimise performance.

Lothar Moehle, Director Security Standardisation, DB Schenker, said forwarders would not even be considered for a contract unless they can supply more visibility: “We have been implementing steps for several years, but it takes time and money to implement these systems, including some change management and training at all levels, including sales people, who need to have a good idea of what is available.”

For Tristan Koch, Managing Director Cargo Sales, Europe, Middle East, Africa (EMEA), American Airlines, the existence of true end-to-end data will “give us all a chance to sort out any wrinkles that might be there”, but he stressed that it was important that KPIs were relevant to the shippers, especially in this world of e-commerce, rather than based on historical data.

Zimmerman agreed with him, mentioning that customers just want a reliable solution. “Many customers just want to know when their shipment will arrive – and if there is a delay, how the problem will the solved.”

At the end of the session, he called on all members of the air freight supply chain to talk to Cargo iQ so that as much data as possible is gathered to help identify the areas to improve performance and work on the most efficient use of the infrastructure, to cut both the financial and environmental costs.