Digitalization in transport and logistics and the dematerializing logistics paper documents create new opportunities for business. Learn about eCMR and eECD!

Despite the value and benefits, the transition and adoption from paper to digital logistics documents is rather slow and complex. This is caused by several internal and external challenges. There is an increasing need for paperless working amongst all actors and along the “end to end” chemical logistics chain. Reasons for that are terms of safety, compliance and data reliability. 

The main pressure to transition to digital e-freight documents comes from the government and the customer. More recently, with COVID-19, the need for contactless logistics grows. 

One of the main problems with digitalization of e-freight documents is that you need tackle different hurdles with different actors at the same time. First you need to adapt to work in a many-to-many relationships environment, also called digital ecosystems. Second you need to be ready and willing to invest and adapt to the new digital process as a company. Third you should agree as a company to share data instead of papers and be prepared to digitally work together. With most IT platforms this is not the case because shared company data get re-monetized and re-used to serve others. 

In this Guideline, we want to share some practical learnings and implementation expertise and zoom in on two digital e-freight documents. First the electronic CMR (= eCMR) and second, the electronic EFTCO cleaning document (= eECD). We share the benefits and challenges. 

This new ECTA Guideline, is a first ECTA guideline in a series of e-freight documents.