Up, up, and Awery

CFG: Awery announced at Air Cargo Africa in FEB23 this year, that it was launching an Open Marketplace for cargo booking (not just a white label solution). Is this still planned to go live in AUG23? How have talks with South African GSAs and airlines been going these past few months?
AB: Yes! The plan is to open with a number of launch partners in AUG23. We are also in discussion with a large number of other GSAs and airlines in the market with a view to them joining in Q4/23. We will announce this next week.

 

CFG: What made Awery choose Africa as its first Open Marketplace continent? And does the open marketplace version have its own name?
AB: The platform is called CargoBooking. We chose Africa as we see the continent as one of the key air freight markets and one that is expanding. We have a number of existing partners there who were asking us to offer this solution as Freight Forwarders are increasingly demanding more online solutions.

 

CFG: It will start in South Africa - where next and what is the project time plan?
AB: The growth will be exponential, and we will add CargoBooking in European regions as well as Asia and Australia. Global coverage is the long-term aim.

 

CFG: Together with Hermes (announced in MAY23 in MUC), you are developing a full end-to-end product, hence adding a GHA module to your suite. This will enable more fluid messaging. How far along is the partnership in bringing the solution to market, and who else is lined up to adopt it? How does this move set Awery apart from other cargo solution providers?
AB: The partnership is progressing well, and we are already engaged with a number of interested parties. Launching h2A with Hermes sets us apart from other cargo solution providers as it is the only fully end-to-end airline solution available on the market currently, which manages all processes across the entire lifecycle of a shipment, from warehousing to flight management, commercial activities, and all HR and business processes behind the scenes. This responds to an industry need to synchronize disparate workflow processes through true integration.

 

CFG: Awery's plans for 2023 include gaining a medium size airline as a new customer. How close to your goal are you - any name to be mentioned yet?
AB: We are actively engaged with a number of different prospects - watch this space.

 

CFG: At the WCS in IST, in APR23, I asked how Awery is deploying AI and how much of air cargo will be AI-run in future? At the time, we talked about Awery’s eMagic tool which is based on AI, and has an 85% accuracy. The machine is constantly learning with new texts and formats, reducing the time needed to quickly convert spots into quotes. A quote can be sent within 7 secs. Other improvements to help customers conveniently update bookings, were also being carried out, along with AI reporting were mentioned. The consensus was that “AI can facilitate your work. We are already in an age where AI is becoming the norm. We cannot do without AI anymore, so should embrace it and use it to our advantage in the work environment." Anything you would like to add since then?
AB: Just that the tech is constantly improving, accuracy levels are rising, and we are now able to read more formats, such as PDF files. Usage is being adopted not just in a sales environment, but also now in other business areas where manual data entry remains an onerous task.

 

CFG: Back in SEP22, you announced: "Awery has partnered with the leading Dutch software provider specialized in solutions for dangerous goods and chemicals management, DGOffice B.V., to integrate DGOffice’s Notification to Captain (NOTOC) module into its Enterprise Resource Planning platform." Has this now been done? And how are customers responding to the possibility?
AB: It’s now been implemented and is currently being used by A.D. Aviation, a cargo GSA in Israel. The module helps to manage Shipments’ Dangerous Goods data, use this information to plan flights and ULDs, and generate NOTOCs. We plan to offer the module to more customers from September 2023.

 

CFG: Any other information of interest you would like to share?
AB: Yes, we recently won the IATA Hackathon for our door-to-door air freight planning and real-time update solution against much larger organizations – proving our position as thought leaders and innovators in the IT aviation space. The solution facilitates cross-stakeholder planning, which if implemented by the air cargo community will dramatically speed up the adoption of a common modern standard across the whole industry. The solution is something we developed in 28 hours straight. Now, we are working towards becoming fully compliant with ONE Record, IATA’s data sharing standard API, and will offer this provision to our customers in the near future.

Thank you, Anna Balan!