In August, Air Canada Cargo celebrated a digital milestone: Its innovative e-Booking tool turned five.
Launched in 2015, Air Canada Cargo’s e-Booking was designed to offer an electronic booking experience for air freight akin to that of booking a passenger flight: visually appealing and easy to navigate.
“The user experience was at the heart of the design from the beginning,” explains Fred Opong-Agyare, Manager, Digital Initiatives.

“I use to send my trucks to the airport with no clarity on whether there was any cargo to pick up.” I was talking with a logistics stakeholder during MODEX 2020. “It was like a [crapshoot].” “Crapshoot” is my word. “For about one-third of the time, I left the airport empty.” These are words from one of Atlanta’s early adaptors who piloted the airport Cargo Community System.

In spring we launched myDHLi, our innovative one-stop customer portal aiming at leveraging digitalization for greater customer focus and efficiency at the same time. This is an objective that might not seem obvious at first glance. We are now several months into the portal’s roll out and this approach has proven right. Covering all needs across different methods of transport holds significant potential for improving not only customer satisfaction but also our daily business. 

Lots of kudos were – rightfully so – given to the many air cargo professionals who ensured goods kept flying the past months. But how to keep these workers safe in an environment that still heavily relies on physical touchpoints and the exchange of paper documents – while social distancing and limited contact should be the new normal? How to address this and, at the same time, getting ready for one of the biggest logistical challenges: the distribution of Covid-19 vaccines which requires maximization of capacity utilization? The answer to both challenges lies in one and the same solution: a hyper-connected, digital process.