Electronic Delivery Order for Air Cargo brings in the required transparency and visibility to trade

 
Delivery Order is an essential document in both Maritime as well as Air Cargo. Like other documents, Freight Forwarders are subject to wait in long queues to obtain this document. Added to this, a significant cost is spent on physical documentation. This not only poses threat to the sustainability goals, but also leads to inaccuracies and data theft. Owing to all these facts, digitisation became a predominant need to eliminate complexities involved in generation and dissemination of Delivery Order.
 
Digitising Delivery Order for air cargo shipments is now picking up pace globally. Digitisation enables easy generation of master and house delivery order followed by tracking their real time status. Also, enabling a simpler e-payment mechanism to fast track the process and ensuring compliance as well as authenticating transactions are other key benefits. Here are some deeper insights on these significant benefits.
 

Significant cost saving on data handling

Logistics (both Air Cargo and Maritime) has been paper intensive for a prolonged time. This not only increased the time of processing, but also increased the cost for Freight Forwarders and Airlines. With a proper electronic mechanism, the paper trails are said to reduce significantly and result in cost savings. Reportedly, with electronic Delivery Order, freight forwarders seem to have saved 3/4^th of the cost spent on physical documentation.
 

Better manpower utility

Freight Forwarders involve their resources on mundane tasks for physical documentation. This consumes hours and causes delays in each process. Therefore, it is important to have a better mechanism to utilise resources well. Involving them in mundane tasks such as a single document approval for hours will let them lose their morale. Whereas digitising this process of documentation will fast track the operations and ensure better manpower utility i.e. on strategic decision making etc.
 

Adhering to regulatory compliance

Cross-border trade is often burdened with multiple regulatory restrictions. Adhering to their norms is quite essential as the movement of freight depends on their approval. From time to time, the norms change and not essentially all are well informed with these. The electronic delivery order for air cargo ensures all these regulatory compliances are inculcated in the system. Therefore, the submitted data is accurate and meet the norms of the regulatory authority.
 

Secured transactions

Cyber security continues to be of greater threat. Over the last few years, the logistics sector has been largely threatened by phishing attacks and data theft largely. With electronic delivery order for Air Cargo, online security is very well ensured. Through this, the e-payment transactions are secured and also the case of data theft as well can be sorted.
 
Electronic Delivery Order for air cargo comes as an add-on service in several cargo community systems and other trade facilitation platforms. Yet, having it as a standalone value-added service is essential for stakeholders such as freight forwarders, consignees, self-handling airlines to name a few. With this being a standalone service, the ones with independent ERP systems to handle their day to day operations can integrate it directly. Therefore, the process becomes simpler and seamlessly easy to handle with accuracy as well as transparency.