Continual e-(r)evolution

Celebrating its 10th anniversary CHAMP Cargosystems, the leading global IT provider dedicated to the needs of the air cargo industry, used the CHAMP Summit 2014 in May to look back at achievements and announce new products and portfolio enhancements. Perhaps the most important message for many users of CHAMP’s Cargo Management Systems was the reconfirmation of the company’s continual investment in its integrated portfolio strategy.

July 7, 2014

Celebrating its 10th anniversary CHAMP Cargosystems, the leading global IT provider dedicated to the needs of the air cargo industry, used the CHAMP Summit 2014 in May to look back at achievements and announce new products and portfolio enhancements. Perhaps the most important message for many users of CHAMP’s Cargo Management Systems was the reconfirmation of the company’s continual investment in its integrated portfolio strategy.

Staying ahead

Continual enhancements and updates are being made to the Cargospot application suite. In the past 12 months improvements have focused on further aligning Cargospot with eCargo initiatives aimed at digitizing the airfreight ‘paper-trail’. Cargospot supports e-Air Waybill (e-AWB), e-Security and e-Customs requirements. Over the next year customers will be offered a new tool shortly to help improve the data quality of e-AWBs and customize rules for error messaging. In addition, applications will be optimized for mobile solutions including tablet computers. New features will be launched to simplify billing and make even better use of information held in cargo management and enterprise systems. These should improve profitability and decision-making.

Multi-facetted air cargo community

Parallel to this evolution CHAMP’s strategic roadmap will revolutionize its application portfolio through the development of its integrated Open Cargo Platform. The platform will be the foundation to further integrate and develop both its eCargo and Core Cargo applications. The Open Cargo Platform (or OCP) will embrace the community integration through a rules and event based architecture. CHAMP also announced recently that it is developing a “next generation” cargo system specifically tailored to the needs of Cargolux, leveraging the OCP framework. CHAMP will continue supporting the eCHAMP application suite for at least another five years until customers are prepared to migrate to a more progressive solution. During this time eCHAMP will be further enhanced to simplify processes and/or meet new requirements of customers, the industry and legislators.

Furthering its Community based strategy, CHAMP has also launched CargoUpdate, a comprehensive airfreight community platform that is optimized for smartphones and tablets and which provides new possibilities for automated and targeted human-to-human communications of relevant operational airfreight announcements. On the drawing board are plans to extend support for Cargo ‘Cloud’ Communities, including support for the industry’s new message standard, IATA Cargo-XML that is replacing Cargo-IMP messaging.

Still compliant

In response to the continuing and varying demands for regulatory compliance, CHAMP has progressively expanded the eCargo suite for customs and security. Additional countries were connected to the Traxon Global Customs (TGC) platform in the past year (e.g. Israel). And further countries are in the pipeline as well as enhancements to take account of new regulatory requirements (e.g. in the USA, Canada, and Mexico). CHAMP has developed several interfaces with customs authorities that use the UN ASYCUDA (Automated SYstem for CUstoms DAta) system. The company is now working on a common interface with all of these authorities to simplify connectivity for traders.

CHAMP expects 2014 to be a landmark year in the progress of eCargo, especially for security. Advance Cargo Information schemes such as the Advance Air Cargo Screening (ACAS) for the US will become the norm for the industry. ACAS US is still in a pilot phase, but similar pre-loading schemes are planned for Canada and the EU over the next two years. CHAMP has been supporting airline and forwarder filing of House Waybill information for pre-loading security risk assessment and targeting. This pre-loading filing will affect operational processes and procedures as well as placing increased demand for quality ‘right first time’ data to be submitted with regulators.

Support, lead, modernize

“These are exciting times for the industry as it transforms itself into a truly digitized business. We are ready to support our customers and lead the industry to help deal with the numerous challenges of profitability, operational efficiency, regulatory compliance and increasing competiveness from alternative modes of transport. We are well positioned to play a significant role in modernizing the air logistics world with our world-class portfolio, supported by an unparalleled workforce of industry professionals during the next ten years and beyond. Conferences like the CHAMP Summit help to accelerate knowledge exchange between our multi-cultural, multi-geographic, multi-lingual clients and us. They are important in driving this continual e-( r)evolution,” said James Fernandez, Vice President, Global Commercial Operations, CHAMP Cargosystems.

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