While momentum is building, the reality is that widespread adoption of digital tools and innovation remains a work in progress. The barriers are no longer primarily technological. Instead, the challenge lies in aligning business processes, data-sharing practices and operational priorities across a highly fragmented ecosystem of airlines, freight forwarders, handlers and logistics providers.
This slower pace reflects the complexity of transforming industry-wide communications standards. Airfreight operations rely on multiple stakeholders exchanging information across different systems, making change difficult to implement uniformly. The organisations creating the most value today are those focused on easing the transition between legacy frameworks and future standards, helping trading partners collaborate even when they operate at different stages of digital maturity.
“I don’t think that it’s had the impact yet that it was expected to have, or that people would like it to have. Any of those changes of a core technology for communication within the air industry always takes a while to propagate out through the industry. It’s a lot of systematic changes that people have to go through,” Scott Sangster, General Manager – Global Logistics Service Providers at Descartes Systems Group, said.
Broader adoption will ultimately determine whether the industry captures the full benefits of digital collaboration. As more participants connect to common frameworks, the opportunity extends beyond faster data exchange to improved coordination, visibility and operational responsiveness across the supply chain.
“ONE Record is not just a technology standard; it’s really an industry collaboration framework that is supposed to be enabling better operations, better coordination across the cargo ecosystem, so you’re addressing inter-enterprise problems, not just inside the four walls of an organisation,” Sangster expressed.
A core operational infrastructure
The conversation around digitalisation has evolved considerably. Five years ago, many organisations approached digital initiatives as innovation projects. Today, digital capability is increasingly viewed as a core operational requirement, driven by customer expectations, regulatory demands and the need for greater efficiency in increasingly complex supply chains.
This shift is changing how investment decisions are made. Rather than focusing solely on technology deployment, industry leaders are assessing how digital tools improve business outcomes. Visibility, booking synchronisation, exception management and customer experience have become strategic priorities because they directly affect service quality, operational resilience and profitability. The most successful organisations are moving beyond isolated projects and pursuing initiatives that generate value across multiple stakeholders.
“The need for digitisation has largely moved beyond companies asking whether it’s necessary, and they’re now focused on how to operationalise it at scale. Five years ago, digitisation was viewed as innovation. Today, it’s a little bit more operational infrastructure,” Sangster noted.
For airfreight operators, the strategic lesson is that technology investments must be linked to measurable operational outcomes. Competitive advantage increasingly comes from the ability to use data more effectively, not simply from possessing new systems.
“The organisations that are making progress are focusing on those operational outcomes, such as whether it be visibility, exception management, booking, synchronisation, and the customer experience. It’s not just a matter of saying I’ve digitised this process or that process, and it’s not simply about the technology deployment—it’s about what are you doing with that and what is it unlocking for you and your customer,” Sangster added.
AI shifts the focus
Artificial intelligence dominated discussions across the cargo sector this year, reflecting growing interest in how organisations can improve productivity while managing labour shortages and mounting cost pressures. Yet industry leaders increasingly recognise that AI is not a standalone solution. Its effectiveness depends on the quality and accessibility of the underlying data infrastructure supporting it.
As digital foundations strengthen, AI is becoming a tool for tackling more sophisticated operational challenges. Predictive disruption management, resource allocation and capacity planning are emerging as practical applications capable of delivering measurable value. Rather than replacing existing systems, AI builds on successful digitalisation efforts and amplifies the benefits of connected data environments.
“AI is only as good as the quality and accessibility of the data that it has to work with, so if you still have fragmented information in silos within your organisation, you’re limiting your automation opportunities,” Sangster expressed.
The labour implications are equally significant. With recruitment challenges continuing across the logistics sector, automation is increasingly viewed as a means of elevating employee roles rather than simply reducing headcount. This creates opportunities to improve productivity while making the industry more attractive to future talent.
“People often assume AI is just going to remove headcount, and while there may be some of that that happens in organisations, there’s manual tasks to be automated. With greater automation, you can then have your resources doing higher-valued operational tasks, which is a benefit for the organisation. It elevates current staff, and it might attract other people into the industry by doing more interesting tasks,” he declared.
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Author: Edward Hardy
