International Freight Forwarders Going For Paper Use

By Author: bvc group
Total Articles: 10
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International Freight Forwarders relieve small shippers the trouble of dealing with carriers for moving cargo. And they help carriers make the most of their cargo space. They also specialize in doing the documentation so necessary in every leg of transportation. However, are they doing all these in an automated manner? Or is use of the age old silken strand of tree bark still dominant in their corridors? Let's explore...
Even today, paper is used heavily in this industry segment. Operational, contract management and government documents are exchanged in paper formats. Even developed countries such as US are some of the highest users of paper. E-mail may have drastically reduced physical delivery of documents; however printouts are the norm and not the exception here.
One such logistics company and international freight forwarder is BVC Group logistics which is well versed with all these services and provides maximum consumer satisfaction. BVC Group is one of the most reputed logistics companies in India since last 50 years that reaches out to provide secured logistics solution for valuables all over the world. It ...
... is a trusted service provider for secure transportation like gold transportation and is famous as international freight forwarders. BVC Group today has a huge network which validates global connectivity and is perhaps amongst the very few Indian Logistic Houses to be associated with Major Brands across a number of countries of the world. The vision of the company is to lead in specialized logistics and to provide end-to-end solutions to all corporate while maximizing value for all stakeholders. So customer as well as employee centric approach that it follows makes it impeccable in delivering proper service
A primary reason is reliance on paper as principal means of correspondence by their trading partners across the globe. There are thousands of carriers and shippers to deal with and there is no uniformity in IT systems and automated data exchange protocols. Paper documents are also essential for security during legal proceedings, audits by government and customer support. Many ports, customs and government bureaucracy extensively use paper although electronic data exchange is available with most countries. In many cases banks require printout of non-negotiable documents to clear letters of credit. Contract processes in ocean freight transportation space have been manual and paper-oriented for long.
As a result, forwarders invest lot of money in storage fees every year, and struggle with operational issues of retrieving specific documents when needed. Needless to say the effect all this has on the forest canopy! Also, accessibility to latest global buying rates reduces for users. Updates don't always reach all required recipients. Users are forced to access local carriers who may not offer the most profitable pricing.
There are automated document management solutions in the market that procure, convert, organize, distribute/route and keep track of documents in an automated manner. These document handling platforms - accessible from PCs or network-enabled scanning machines - makes documents available anywhere and everywhere and help bring up an electronic filing cabinet. However, these products can be pricy to purchase, maintain and customize for specific needs.
Many organizations in similar fields, such as UPS, FedEx and DHL, have progressed a lot to eliminate paper using IT. Expeditors is another great success story in this direction. However all of them have a large sized IT staff supporting a number of in-house or customized applications. Most forwarders are not large enough and many are quite apprehensive of sophisticated IT solutions. For them - spreadsheet-based applications, intranets or shared file folders are the closest they have gone towards automation. With these though, it is still difficult to find information, maintain contracts, track latest rates and surcharge information.
The positive to all of this, well, there is a huge opportunity to automate this industry. A few encouraging steps have been taken, with The International Air Transport Association's e-freight for domestic shipments becoming operational at over 50 U.S. airports - removing paper from air cargo logistics - and INTTRA coming out with 'green' calculators to bring out environment benefits along with time and money advantages of eliminating paper and retiring manual processes. Let's hope these steps are just the start towards the next green revolution