Cargo IQ to offer new smart data portal

Cargo iQ, the IATA interest group that seeks to create and encourage the implementation of quality standards for the worldwide air cargo industry, is to launch a smart data program that will give its more than 80 members – major airlines, freight forwarders, ground-handling agents, trucking companies and IT solution providers – online access to an enhanced reporting platform.
That platform will, hopes Cargo iQ (which was formerly known as Cargo 2000), allow the “customised analysis of milestones to support quality initiatives.
The portal has been developed with software from Basel-based iRIX Software Engineering and business intelligence technology from New York-headquartered Information Builders.
The portal forms part of Cargo’s iQ wider Smart Data programme, a three-stage project that is intended to produce a broader scope of measurements, more information on specific milestones, and allow self-service member access to the group’s reporting platform.
Module One of the project, which will assist with airport-to-airport data collection and benchmarking processing, is underway and due for completion in the spring of this year.
IT service provider iRIX Software Engineering will implement Module Two, the online portal, which Cargo iQ members will be able to use to interrogate Cargo iQ data for customised reports on milestones covering individual routes, timeframes and the performance of their partners.
Full access to the portal is expected to be possible by autumn this year.
Finally, Cargo iQ has a working group overseeing the implementation of its Smart Data programme, which is working on the specification of Module Three and which will incorporate door-to-door (D2D) data from forwarders and thereby allow an “holistic view on the air cargo distribution chain”.
“The Smart Data project will enable members to look at the data in a lot more detail and analyse it more easily so that they can reallocate resources to the areas where it is most needed to improve their processes, and consequently, their quality,” informed Ariaen Zimmerman, executive director of Cargo iQ.
“We are providing them with enhanced milestone data transparency to drive innovation along the whole door-to-door airfreight supply chain, whilst supporting individual and industry quality and process improvement,” he added.
The Smart Data programme is itself just one part of a series of Cargo iQ initiatives that it hopes will “improve the value Cargo iQ delivers to its members and to the industry as a whole”.