By Alexander Whiteman
Forwarders are still reluctant to fully embrace the digital revolution, with some 25 per cent failing to provide adequate online contact and sales forms. A survey of the world’s 20 largest forwarders, conducted by booking platform Freightos, also found that Kuehne + Nagel was the only one to prominently display a quote request form. (more…)
By Keith Norbury
“Technology” is the best word to describe how freight forwarding has changed over the years, says Kim Gallacher, ocean freight manager for Montréal-based Delmar International Inc. “When I started, there was no Internet,” said Ms. Gallacher who has been in the business for over a quarter century, the last eight years with Delmar. “We typed bills of lading or manifests by hand on typewriters with carbon paper. If you made a mistake at the last minute, you’d have to do it all over again.”
She would look forward to the arrival of Canadian Sailings magazine on her desk because it was then the only way to check the shipping schedules. “There were no online schedules,” Ms. Gallacher said.
Making an overseas phone call was also much more difficult than it is today, and “Telex machines were one of our main sources of communication with our overseas offices,” Ms. Gallacher said.
Award honours female leaders
In recognition of her role as a female leader in the industry, Ms. Gallacher received CIFFA’s inaugural Donna Letterio Leadership Award in 2015. The award is named for CIFFA’s first and still only female President, who died from bladder cancer in 2013 near the end of her two-year term. Ms. Gallacher described winning the award as a “career-making moment.” She is also proud to have known Ms. Letterio from having met her at industry functions and training sessions over the years. “She was a mentor,” Ms. Gallacher said, noting that Ms. Letterio rose from the ranks of the industry to become CEO of DHL Global Forwarding (Canada) Inc. “Like all of us, she learned through CIFFA courses and working in the business, in the trenches,” Ms. Gallacher said.
Fast forward to 2018, and “Delmar is on the forefront of going paperless,” she said. That includes being fully engaged and automated with the Canadian Border Services Agency’s eManifest system.
Anticipated impacts
On the horizon is the anticipated introduction of blockchain technology, which Ms. Gallacher has been reading up on. “It’s not a simple thing and not to be taken lightly,” Ms. Gallacher said. Based on her research to date, Ms. Gallacher said blockchain “has the potential to greatly increase transaction efficiencies between international parties.” However, she said, it’s too early to know what benefits and risks the technology poses for her industry. “The key is balancing the benefit and the risk and finding out what works,” Ms. Gallacher said. “Maybe what works for one company doesn’t work for another. Or there could be an industry standard that’s formed. I think it’s really too early in the conversation to be speculating.”
Also expected to have an impact on the industry in the not-so-distant future are autonomous vehicles, the expanded reach of Amazon, and the potential for Uber- or Airbnb-type disruptions. Ms. Gallacher expresses confidence that those upstarts won’t make freight forwarding obsolete, however. “I have a biased opinion, and I think that our group of freight forwarders is highly professional and highly knowledgeable and highly connected globally,” Ms. Gallacher said. “So, again, my biased opinion is I would find it hard to believe that somebody could just jump in here and do that.”
Different approaches
What she does anticipate is for more young people and women to jump into the profession. As someone who supervises a team of more than a dozen workers of various ages, she said “it’s all true” that millennials and baby boomers require different approaches in the workplace. The increasing numbers of women, meanwhile, “is a wonderful thing,” she said. “Twenty years ago in the industry, women were far outnumbered by men, and that’s just not the case today,” she said. Looking ahead, Ms. Gallacher expects to see even more women in her profession. Ideally, she would like those numbers to reflect the general population. “For example, if women are 55 per cent in the world there should be 55 per cent women in your company,” Ms. Gallacher said.
She would also like to serve on CIFFA’s Board one day. She already contributes to the association’s advocacy efforts by serving on its National Seafreight Committee and on the CBSA’s Working Group Subcommittee.
Back in Canada
The most recent winner of the Donna Letterio Leadership Award, Lucia Pinheiro, said she was “honoured and humbled” to receive the award this April. When Ms. Pinheiro returned to Canada in 2013 after about 15 years abroad, she heard a lot about Ms. Letterio’s contributions to the industry. Ms. Pinheiro has been country manager and President of Damco Canada since April 2013. This February she added “area CEO for the U.S. West Coast” to her title. In Canada, she oversees about 60 employees at Damco’s freight forwarding, logistics and customs operations. Including its distribution division, Damco has 150 employees across Canada. Internationally, the company employs more than 10,000 people in more than 100 countries. Damco is part of A.P. Moller – Maersk.
It was with Maersk Sealand Canada that Ms. Pinheiro got her start in the business as an account coordinator. Then her career took her to exotic locales such as Singapore and Dubai, where she discovered that women lead many of the management teams.
“Coming back to Canada, I became very aware of the fact that I was in the minority,” she said, although she has already noticed improvements in the number of women in the industry. Ms. Pinheiro has also happily noticed improvements in formal education in the industry. “Twenty years ago when I came out of school, there were no programs for logistics or international transportation,” she said.
Happy career choice
Ms. Pinheiro graduated with a business degree from the University of Western Ontario in 1997, with an eye toward a banking career. At the time, she was also working with her family’s janitorial business in London, Ont., when Maersk recruited her. “I’m super super happy that I chose transportation. It’s taken me all over the world,” said Ms. Pinheiro, whose familial roots are on the Azores Island of Faial and who is fluent in Portuguese, Spanish, Danish, French, and English.
Looking ahead, she predicts massive disruptions coming in her industry. “And it’s not from who you would traditionally say would be a competitor,” Ms. Pinheiro said. “It’s technology companies. It’s data. It’s big data. It’s blockchain. Since the beginning of time, our industry has been one that’s extremely fragmented, extremely manual, paper-based, (and) very, very traditional when it comes to the various steps and parties involved in international freight and international logistics.” She cited the example of eManifest, which the Canada Border Services Agency has been working to roll out since before her return to Canada “and we still don’t have it off the ground,” she said.
99.99 per cent paperless
Her company, however, has made eManifest a priority and is now “99.99 per cent” of the way to being paperless. “I feel pretty good that our team has delivered all the milestones that we need to deliver,” Ms. Pinheiro said. “But we’re also at the mercy of the Canadian government.”
When it comes to blockchain, Damco’s parent company is at the forefront, having recently forged a joint venture with IBM. Ms. Pinheiro wasn’t at liberty to discuss the timeline for blockchain’s implementation, though. “But I can tell you that we’re very excited about it.” Among the exciting promises of blockchain is that it will enable seamless tracking of cargo shipments. “You will be able to track immediately where a container is in the process, and what documentation is linked to it,” Ms. Pinheiro explained. “You won’t have to send 80 emails to 100 different parties to track it down.”
By R. Bruce Striegler
Little did Prime Minister Justin Trudeau realize in November 2016 as he stood before a crowd of reporters in Vancouver announcing his government’s $1.5 billion Oceans Protection Plan, that he would ultimately have to declare in May 2018 the government would be spending a further $4.5 billion to purchase the Trans Mountain pipeline and all of Kinder Morgan Canada’s core assets.
By Keith Norbury
What does the future of freight forwarding look like in Canada? Let’s ask recent winners of the Canadian International Freight Forwarders Association’s annual Young International Freight Forwarder of the Year competition. The 2017 winner, Bradley Davis — who went on to win the global YIFFY award — said he wishes he had a crystal ball. Even without one, he said, “I definitely see a lot of the trucking industry starting to move towards autonomous vehicles.” He also envisions information technology platforms enabling forwarders “to go after a lot of the customers that are your onesie-twosies that can be worked automatically through a system.” And he expects to see more consolidation in the industry as large companies acquire small and medium-sized forwarders. (more…)
By Ruth Snowden, Executive Director, CIFFA
Just as Robert Keen predicts there will be a BIFA in 10 years’ time (see subsequent article), I can confidently predict that there will be a CIFFA in 10 years’ time. This year we are celebrating 70 years of representing the international freight forwarding community in Canada – over seven decades of change, some gradual and some rapid-fire. One of CIFFA’s mandates is to ‘represent and support’ the industry in providing the highest level of quality and professional services to their clients.” And we take that to mean helping forwarders prepare for the significant – even transformational change – that is coming their way.
Yes, that means providing the sector training that employees and entrants to the business need to survive in international transportation and global trade: College level certificate courses, targeted workshops, management training. It also means providing context to these changes – preparing members on what to expect over the next 18 months, let alone the next decade. Exactly what is blockchain and how will it impact marine bills of lading and the marine intermodal business? How will blockchain eliminate non-value added activities from the air cargo supply chain? How can forwarders use new technologies to deliver the transparency and speed of service that Canadian importers and exporters rightly expect? How can 3PLs position themselves as critical ‘value add’ suppliers to their customers? That is the challenge of the association over the short -term, staying relevant and ensuring that forwarders are ahead of that learning and investment curve.
Let’s not kid ourselves. The next couple of years may not be easy. And not every 3PL will prosper. However, those organizations that grasp the opportunity to embrace this tsunami of change, will do more than survive, they will thrive.
Look at Canada’s air export supply chain today – a fragmented market with many small companies shipping occasionally by air. [In April, Transport Canada lists some 10,899 Account Consignors plus 691 Known Consignors across the country.] An exporter keys data into its operating system and generates a commercial invoice which it sends, along with any packing lists, certificates of origin or other ‘documents’ to its customer, in all likelihood by email. In rare cases, an exporter may send data EDI to its freight forwarder, it may perhaps more frequently re-key data into the forwarder’s operating system via a portal although unfortunately, in most cases, it will send scans of its commercial documents to the forwarder by email – who re-keys the same data into its operating system. If the forwarder sends eAWB data by EDI to the carrier and if the air carrier accepts eAWB to that destination, perhaps the re-keying stops there. If not, the forwarder re-keys the data into an airline portal or creates a paper air waybill. And it doesn’t stop there. Export reports can be filed on a paper B13A declaration because electronic exporter reporting has not been made mandatory and that amending legislation probably won’t be place before the end of 2019 or early 2020. So CBSA can risk assess exports on paper. Data is re-keyed or documents sent by email to destination ground handlers, destination and in-transit Customs organizations, interline carriers, insurance companies … What a cost of quality. What an inefficient system.
Think of how new technologies will allow us to create additional value. Think of the opportunity if we are able to stop re-keying data. Think of how those employees could be re-deployed talking to customers, developing new solutions, seeking more customers. Think of how much faster data could be made available to customers. Think how speed and transparency will improve by those forwarders who embrace new technologies and use technology to improve their business. CIFFA is committed to bringing its members and the industry critical information on staying ahead of the curve.
Register today to attend the CIFFA 70th Anniversary Conference Global Supply Chains in a Digital Future: Innovation and Inspiration where more than 35 speakers will bring home the message and deliver the future. https://ciffaconference2018.com/
[Toronto Pearson ranks 49th on IATA’s list of eAWB compliant airports and Canada is not in the top 10 countries. Canada ranks 23rd with 44.1% eAWB penetration. www.iata.org/whatwedo/cargo/e/eawb/Documents/e-awb-monthly-report-r17.pdf ]
By Guy M. Tombs
At a recent Port of Montreal evening, I approached an industry veteran with a lot of experience in project cargoes and asked him, “What is the future of project logistics?” He wryly answered, “It’s not me.” Time to move on. I circled the sumptuous tables of hors d’oeuvres and felt in some of the faces I recognized, and friends I re-met, a sense of the seismic changes that are occurring in the shipping industry. The past we think we know – the present we are negotiating – the future is less familiar. (more…)