Air Canada renews Unisys contract

Air Canada Cargo has extended its agreement with Unisys Corporation to employ the latter’s cloud-based Logistics Management System (LMS) to manage its domestic and international cargo services,
The deal also covers Unisys’ Cargo Portal Services multi-carrier air cargo booking portal and its In-transit Service Manager, a time-based supply chain event management system that helps carriers meet commitments by alerting issues before they become problems and by providing reports in line with the Cargo iQ (formerly Cargo 2000) quality standard for the air cargo industry
A long-standing Unisys customer, Air Canada was one of the earliest adopters of Unisys’ cloud services in 1997.
LMS’s cloud-based delivery model benefits from monthly updates and faster speed-to-market than traditional software operation, a Unisys statement informs.
“In addition to the benefits of our established relationships and valued presence in the Unisys cargo community, we particularly value the open and modern interfaces of LMS that allow third-party providers to ‘plug and play’ with our enterprise system,” notes Lise-Marie Turpin, Air Canada Cargo vice president.
“We are committed to using technology to deliver world-class cargo services and innovation, and having a partner with wide domain and technology expertise on whom we can rely to deliver our business and help us grow through differentiated services is critical."
As part of the contract extension, Unisys and Air Canada Cargo are also collaborating on bringing new improvements to LMS that will offer commercial and operational business benefits to the carrier.
Christopher Shawdon, vice president, logistics solutions for Unisys, pointed to “the further innovation we have planned together such as the mobilisation of cargo technology away from a personal computer and keyboard”.
Cost savings
Using the cloud to deliver the LMS cargo management system saves carriers on the costs associated with running in-house systems and enables enhancements to be deployed each month and made immediately available to clients.
Moreover, it is said by the Unisys to “drive community collaboration in software development among airline clients and enables airlines to respond quickly to constantly changing air cargo industry requirements”.
More than 20% of the world’s air cargo shipments are said by Unisys to be processed on its systems.