Air cargo tech providers seek out ‘value-adds’ to secure market share in competitive field

Digitalization among air cargo operators has accelerated since the beginning of 2020. With more options and companies hoping to become preferred providers within the industry, technology providers are increasingly looking to value-added services and analytical tools to tempt operators to their services. [caption id="attachment_97486" align="alignright" width="450"] Image: cargo.one[/caption] Awery Aviation Software offers an array of software solutions for cargo airlines, general sales agents (GSAs), cargo handlers and charter brokers, among other operator types. The company also offers an online booking portal, CargoBooking.aero, which competes with booking portals offered directly by larger cargo carriers as well as competitor platforms like WebCargo and cargo.one. “If you’re a large, tech-savvy, tech-ready airline, you may have your own online booking platform so you may want clients to go directly to your site, which is fine,” Awery Chief Commercial Officer Tristan Koch told Air Cargo World . “If you’re a smaller airline, you simply don’t have this capability and we’re providing you with the technology to enable your clients to interact with you in a more modern way. So for those bigger groups of airlines that have their own online portals, we need to bring them value-adds.” Value-adds may consist of the alternative marketplace of clients online booking platforms like CargoBooking can provide, with potential customers and freight forwarders who may not have existing business with the airline, Koch noted. Other online booking platforms have noted the potential for smaller forwarders to access carrier capacity via an online marketplace, potentially presenting new commercial opportunities for carriers. The user experience provided by online booking platforms can also be a value-add for carriers, Koch said. Awery has focused on providing an intuitive user experience for booking through its platform, while also offering connections to its other software tools through the system, including its eMagic tool. With many cargo quotes and bookings still reliant on email communication, eMagic, via an email plugin, recognizes messages from customers and extracts relevant information for quotes including cargo origin, destination and dimensions to automatically fill in digital forms. WebCargo and cargo.one, meanwhile, have also continued to expand their global footprints and seek out value-adds of their own. In October, WebCargo’s parent Freightos launched the Freightos Air Index , which utilizes data from a variety of sources within Freightos’ system, including WebCargo booking data, for a free air cargo price index. About one month later, cargo.one launched a data product for carriers on its platform called cargo.one360, providing around 30 performance metrics related to carrier e-booking. Awery’s Koch noted the company is “perhaps slightly behind, timewise, some of the competitors” in marketing its e-booking platform, but is confident that its software suite and AI tools can offer “richer functionality” and a strong user experience. Other platforms have “really led the market in digitalization of the airfreight industry, which is brilliant because we need that, we need a community of platforms to push the change through,” Koch said. As that breakthrough moment comes, Koch said he believes additional offerings that meet the market’s needs will help Awery grow its market share. “But actually, the reality of how much of [the market] is being delivered in this new way is probably less than people believe,” he said. “There’s a lot of work still to do.”

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