A critical foundation for e-freight is the need to improve industry wide EDI Data quality in order to reduce paper work.
To this end, the IATA e-freight project, together with the industry, has launched an e-freight Message Improvement Program to:
- Ensure electronic messages that replace existing paper documents are 100% complete and accurate for all shipments.
- Give e-freight stakeholders confidence in the quality (completeness / accuracy) of the data in those messages
Benefits of MIP are as follows:
- No need to pay for rejected messages
- No need to re-enter data for rejected messages (reduced man-hours)
- Reduced fines imposed by Customs
- Increased penetration of EDI messages will result in reduced data entry (and reduced cost) for forwarders, airlines and ground handlers
Carriers and Forwarders who participate (participate means actually supplying data), will be invited to take part in industry workshops to learn more about the IATA e-freight Message improvement programme , help shape the programme and help develop industry best practice.
IATA e-freight and Cargo 2000 are supporting the provision of complete and accurate data to ensure a simple, efficient paper-free industry.
Focus
The initial focus is on the FWB and FHL messages and measure the following:
- Messages rejected by CCS
- Messages rejected by Airline
- Business data invalid after syntax checks passed
- Duplicate messages
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How can a carrier participate in the IATA e-freight Message Improvement Program?
- Read the e-freight MIP strategy
- Contact your CCS as to how to measure penetration, the above error messages and duplicate messages and agree implementation dates. Although it is still important, you can still be involved, without waiting for the development required for measuring "Business data invalid after syntax checks passed" type errors.
- Identify dates for implementation of "Business data invalid after syntax checks passed" measurement.
- Sign up for the e-freight MIP, contact Constantin Syridis. Include implementation dates for the measurement of all three error types and duplicate messages with the date by which you will be able to
supply the first monthly report. You will subsequently be added to the e-freight MIP information distribution list.
- Send monthly status reports, in the agreed IATA format, to the above, on the 15th of each month containing the statistics for the previous month.
Subsequently, there will be a series of workshops
which will be used to develop and implement strategies for addressing the improvements and increasing message penetration.