STREAMLINING LOGISTICS DATA

AI is poised to revolutionise supply chain logistics by addressing a longstanding challenge that has plagued the industry for decades: the lack of seamless data integration across a vast and fragmented network. Logistics involves coordination between numerous entities—suppliers, carriers, brokers, and drayage providers—each operating with its own systems, processes, and data formats.

For years, the industry has struggled to unify this data into a common language. Efforts such as 10 standards bodies and middleware solutions have attempted to bridge the gap, but none have achieved widespread success. As a result, logistics remains heavily reliant on unstructured, siloed data—emails, Excel files, PDFs—that flood inboxes daily. Critical information is buried in thousands of messages, requiring manual extraction and re-entry into different systems.

This process is not only time-consuming but also introduces errors, delays, and inefficiencies that hinder software performance. AI has the potential to eliminate these bottlenecks by automating data extraction, interpretation, and integration, transforming how logistics operates.

“The information we’re talking about here is critical. It’s not just routine data—it’s invoices requiring payment, essential documents for customs clearance, or shipment details that, if missed, can cause major disruptions. If a customs document doesn’t arrive on time, a shipment gets stuck. If a booking is changed—say, a terminal or airport gate is reassigned—but that update is buried in a flood of emails, the shipment might arrive with no plane or truck ready to move it,” Greg Kefer, Chief Marketing Officer of Raft, stated.

“When this happens, logistics team…