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6 Reasons Why You Should Consider Digital Transformation while Building Your Ocean Freight Strategy

Yeah! It’s true! A digital freight forwarder can pass the test of time. And! Time demands almost every business to undergo a digital transformation if they want to survive the disruption caused by the evolving technological landscape. Of course! The Covid-19 outbreak propelled digitalization even more but digitalization had anyway become the need of the hour for almost every industry.  The ocean freight industry is no expectation. In this article, we will discuss how going digital has become crucial for ocean freight businesses to meet the freight requirements. So, let’s break it all.

#1: Automation

Like any other industry, time efficiency is crucial in the ocean freight industry as well. Each step of the supply chain should be timed perfectly to ensure the well-timed delivery of goods without any disruption. Meeting the delivery goals is anyway a challenge for shippers, delays often lead to extra costs like demurrage and detention charges. However, digitalization can make even the most complex operations in the maritime supply chain simple by automation. Automating the back-office operations like making calls or sending emails & faxes for tracking freight, getting rates, or accomplishing the paperwork can certainly increase time efficiency. Not just that, it also reduces the error ratio significantly. 

#2: Real-time Tracking

Digitalization enables real-time tracking that provides end-to-end visibility of the supply chain to the customers. By understanding the possible delays shippers could plan accurate ETAs to be given to the customers. As a result, not only customers are happy but there is a reduction in customer service call-ins as well that may take place due to delays. Moreover, end-to-end visibility also enables dynamic routing. Through permanent data sharing the route could be optimized and delays could be avoided. It is helpful mainly in the case of ocean freight disruption caused due to blank sailing or port congestion. 

#3: Interoperability

Digitalization helps you streamline the data flow through the ocean freight operations and provides data-based insights to improve efficiencies. But that’s not all! It also enables global interoperability between different stakeholders that, in turn, enables real end-to-end visibility capturing efficiencies that remain untapped due to lack of interoperable systems. 

#4: The Internet of Things (IoT)

Digitalization is important because to have end-to-end visibility within the supply chain, you need IoT devices at nodal points throughout the value chain. By helping the ocean freight companies in enabling containers’ real-time tracking and measuring humidity & temperature for sensitive goods quality maintenance, these devices help them discern disruption or problems in the shipping process.  

#5: Blockchain

By providing an end-to-end solution and more visibility into the network, blockchain technology helps ocean freight companies eliminate the unnecessary intermediaries that lie in the supply chain. It not only reduces clerical order and bottlenecks but also increases transparency through smart contracts. If you couple blockchain technology with big data and artificial intelligence, it can be very beneficial for supply chain interoperability. However, leveraging blockchain technology is possible through digitalization.

#6: Data Analytics

Data analytics optimizes your business even more by helping you analyze your data and make it more meaningful. Without the application of analytics, all your precious data is nothing but siloes of information that arise from operations. Though important, it isn’t useful until streamlined. Once rationalized, data could positively impact your company’s workflows, improve operations, and lay the foundation of the execution of blockchain and interoperability.

The CRUX

‍Several reasons make digitalization an integral part of a successful ocean freight business. These were only the top six. Only a digital freight forwarder can indeed survive the disruption caused by digitalization. Perhaps, this is the reason why almost all the big players in the ocean freight industry have undergone a digital transformation and migrated their systems to automated ones.  Through digitalization, they can perform many tasks faster like generating inquiries, receiving quotes, etc.

Though there are several freight forwarders in the UAE, only a few are digital. If you are looking for digital freight forwarding companies in the UAE, do your homework well and look for companies like TLM IFS that embrace cutting-edge technologies. If you want to work with the top freight forwarding company in the UAE, you can rely on TLM IFS. Businesses that have worked with the company consider it as the top freight forwarding company in Dubai.