It’s all about transformation,” says IATA’s global head of cargo, Glyn Hughes in reference to a significant organisation-wide restructuring which began with the cargo division. “We need to transform because the people we are providing services for, that are using the system are transforming.
“Th e industry that they are operating in has changed and we need to make sure that as an industry, that we are effectively supporting that change with how we are doing things ourselves,” he added.
Th e restructuring was driven by a number of factors within an environment where “the only constant is that change is the ‘new normal’”, he said pointing to e-commerce as but one example of a key driver of change, not just for the air cargo sector, but the world in general.
“So we absolutely, consistently, need to reengineer everything, refocus ourselves and our energy so that as an industry we are lean, productive and innovative,” Hughes said.
Th e organisation took a serious look inwards over the last 12 at how it did things, why and for who. Governance is key part of the strength of how IATA has set standards for the last 40-50 years in terms of how the organisation brings people together to collaboratively develop solutions and develop these standards, Hughes noted.
But the consequence of that process is it can be very slow and with the pace of change ever increasing it has become crucial that responses to those needs for changing standards also became faster.
“So we’ve looked at how we’re structured from a government’s perspective and within just cargo we have in the region of 30 – 40 working groups dedicated to the diff erent tasks,” he said.
And while they had some inherent value he said, there was a need to reduce the burden on members and also to accelerate the adopted standards that came about from those groups, there as an important need for simplification. “So we are effectively starting from scratch, we are building a new governance process that will be focused much more on industry collaborative solutions and the speed of getting those adopted and implemented,” Hughes explained. While this process is happing across the organisation, Hughes notes that, “within cargo we identified earlier on that we had a real problem”.
The aim is to introduce a new governance process by March of 2016.
Taking the example of e-freight, “there are 16 different working groups and when you’re trying to actually promote the idea of simplification in an industry and you have to go to through 16 diff erent groups to agree on how you you’re going to simplify the industry, it somehow loses the message in the process. So for us, we absolutely need it critically, now.”
Describing it as an evolution within the cargo team Hughes said the process is structured around industry priorities and how its members are structured as well. “I think our role as the IATA Cargo team is to be lean and adaptive – if we’re promoting that for the industry we need to promote that for ourselves as well,” he said.
Th e IATA Cargo team will continue to work closely with the cargo committee which saw a new committee voted into place at the IATA AGM this past June for another two-year term with Lise- Marie Turpin, VP of Air Canada Cargo as chairperson. Th e cargo committee has also been extended and now includes 20 carriers, “which is a pretty hefty group of carriers to handle in a room but the critical facet that they focus on is how to improve the industry,” Hughes added.
Ten industry priorities have also been identified, including:
1. Enhancing safety
2. Improving security
3. Pushing for smarter regulations
4. Strengthening the value proposition of air cargo
5. Driving efficiency through global standards
6. Modernising air cargo
7. Improving quality
8. Protecting cash
9. trengthening partnerships
10. Building sustainability
Th e transformation process also saw a change in the Cargo teams’ make-up, including the co-locating of the Cargo 2000 team headed by executive director Ariaen Zimmerman in the Geneva headquarters of IATA; a new Cargo Operations team headed by Brendan Sullivan; a consolidation of security and trade-related functions under a Border Management/Trade Facilitation team headed by Gordon Wright and a new head of Cargo Industry Management, Anne-Marie MacCarthy.