Why the Best Cargo Technology Is Almost Invisible 

By Lance Duppa-Whyte, Product Director, Hermes Logistics Technologies

When people talk about air cargo technology, they often focus on features.

How many modules does it have? How many integrations? Does it support AI? Is it cloud-based?

Those things all matter, but after spending more than 30 years in the industry, I’ve come to believe that the best cargo technology doesn’t demand your attention.

In a busy cargo operation, people aren’t thinking about software. They’re thinking about flights that need to close, customers waiting at reception, warehouse activity, dangerous goods, truck arrivals and unexpected operational issues.

The system shouldn’t become another thing competing for their attention. Instead, it should quietly guide users through their work, present the right information at the right time and help prevent mistakes before they happen.

I often think back to my early days working at Lufthansa Cargo. We didn’t have digital workflows telling us what to do next. Much of the knowledge sat with experienced people who understood the operation because they’d lived it.

As the industry became more digital, one of the biggest opportunities was capturing that operational knowledge and embedding it into the systems people use every day. Good cargo software doesn’t just record information, it helps users make better decisions by highlighting missing information before it becomes a problem, presenting related data together so users don’t have to search multiple screens or guiding someone through a process they’ve only performed a handful of times.

These are the kind of improvements that make a real difference in a live cargo environment. They provide users with confidence that the information they’re seeing is accurate and that they haven’t overlooked something important during a busy shift.

If users finish their day thinking about the operation rather than the software, I think we’ve done our job well.