The ePic Mobile Warehouse Management System using an Apple iPad mounted on the forklift, is a sequel to the well-known ePic Customer Service portal launched two and half years ago.  ePic continues to amaze the industry with its radical innovations in the warehouse space. Highly recognized in the air cargo community with its cutting-edge technologies, ePic emboldens a new paradigm of operations free of paper, one step closer to 100% e-freight.

No matter what system you adopt, when people are buried in a paper mess, e-freight will be a mere vision. While handling the freight, people are breaking down paper, copying paper, printing paper, stapling paper, giving and taking paper, filing paper, piling paper, putting away paper, misplacing and looking for paper, discarding paper – paperwork over paperwork over mountains of yet more paperwork. They may probably be spending more time in handling documents. It’s hard to imagine how sustainable cargo handling business can be.

Come to the Handling Track and see for yourself how we tell an ePic story of meeting the challenge – transforming the cargo handling process from a paper-dependant madness into a people-centric, simple cargo process. Fun and revolutionary.

Why is e-freight only adopted at 6% in the United States?

Only 6 out of 100 shipments out of the United States are e-freight, in fourteen years consecutive, tireless effort.

The answer boils down to and actually lies in the hands of the forwarder. Those who cut the paper Airway Bills simply do not see the benefits of going paperless.

We must ask hard questions. We must speak to the hearts of them.

1. Does e-AWB practice reduce duplicate data entry?
2. Does it simplify the process? For example, to consolidate the AES and AWB data input.
3. Does it provide convenience or excellent user experience as everybody knows what it is due to ubiquitous smartphones ?
4. Does it provide visibility into cargo movement, and therefore quality ?
5. Does it cause extra cost ? If yes, how much and in exchange for what?

These are real challenges we must do our best to meet. We must make sure what we’re delivering has immediate and obvious benefits. People are busy. If they don’t immediately see the benefits of what we’re giving them, they’ll ignore and move on. I get really excited when the stuff we do solves a pain and has immediate and obvious benefits. We badly need a pain-driven design mindset.

In line of the above spirit, we need to provide a community tool to assist those who cut the AWB in achieving our goal. The technology is available and cheap now.

Here is one of the emails I received from Mr. Michael White, CNS e-freight evangelist:

“We need effective communication routes for the forwarders, especially small and medium sized ones, to transmit their FWB & FHL. I think that it is not desirable for the forwarders to input and send their FWB & FHL by using airlines’ home page.

There is no community system in the US but there are signs that companies are looking at that capability. I agree that many forwarders are reluctant to use multiple airline portals and there is a need for a community system.”

Good morning from Sheraton Wild Horse Pass Casino Phoenix, Arizona

Wrong choice of technology. Misled and enslaved by the myth that the line between enterprise and commercial is always clear and present. Desktop, Laptop, tablet, smartphone are all computers. Therefore they are just devices with computing power. It can be just a piece of glass on the wall in next few years and the name computer will disappear.

Examples of that stupidity includes: One sponsorship airlines still adopting devices of PDA as part of their solution. Maybe because of one software provider, which by the way makes the cargo booking hard wired in the entire cargo flow process.

Modal shift is permanent. It means overcapacity which means pricing war which means bare bone fight. Freighter operators will have a tough time and may go out of business.

Complications astonishingly grow as TSA, FFA require more and more costly measures while the entire industry needs radical simplifications to reduce the cost for survival.

Fuel cost fluctuates and screws up every business plan

European and Asian markets remain weak and are struggling with the imbalance between fronthaul and backhaul. South America and Africa may be doing well, but how well so that they can be significant ?

IATA is accelerating the adoption of e-AWB. Effort of such will give us a precious opportunity to do something big by rolling out EFG. IATA will market it for free. That is why Calogi, CCN, Champ, and those we don’t know yet, all want to do something.

EFG will bring to the market exactly what the industry need. Timing is everything. We must realize that this is a clear signal not a noise. Otherwise we would regret our inaction or delay of action forever.

Big Data that emphasizes correlation not the causality, will give business insight and intelligence. ePic makes our dock realtime. The information captured at the dock provides lots of possibilities. The challenge is how we can come up with information that stakeholders love to consume – graph, pie, indicators, signals, headlines, etc. Otherwise we just manufacture more noise people will treat like garbage.

While betting on Innovation as technology becomes so affordable is a repeat of the theme we have been saying, the Tabula rasa approach brought up by Brian Clancy is definitely a small, BIG tip that not everyone will notice and take. However, We will as we have already done so.

There was an immitation of my drawing regarding how people are buried by paperwork. lol.

How much I wish If only we could have put an exhibition booth at CNS to brandish our innovative value propositions, the impact would have been huge and different. There are smart people at the exhibition. One of them is Mexpress. The chairman and CEO was the exhibitor himself. He gave me a cigar. More on this later. By the way, they also co-display the IAS Trucking brochure. Interesting.

Help shape the future of ePic – with your ideas. You know better than anyone else what you want from ePic. So tell us. What’s your ePic idea? Revolutionary, simple or just for fun, we want to hear it.

We are here and ready to make ideas happen. Submit ideas and get a chance to win an iPad mini

ePic from idea to design to development to deployment