Whilst the world’s transport modes tried to navigate bottlenecks to manage supply chains, software experts and data scientists have been working remotely to speed up the digitalisation and automation of the air cargo and logistics industry.
Software and optimization company Wiremind recently has doubled down on its air cargo division and is actively hiring. The company’s data scientists and software experts are working with the likes of Emirates, Qantas, United and Atlas Air to speed up the movement of air cargo on and off the ground.
Its flagship software Skypallet digitalizes the space calculation for each booking or quotation, which is essential for pricing, standardizing, and improving customer feedback.
In an interview, Payload Asia talked to Nathanaël De Tarade, chief commercial officer at Wiremind, as he discussed what the company is doing to help air cargo and transport stakeholders move towards digitalisation and optimize their revenue at a time of tight capacity.
Can you give us a rundown of Wiremind? Where are you based and which industries do you serve?
Wiremind is a software and optimization company based in Paris, France. We mainly serve the industry of transportation for both freight and passenger. We are over 50 people, and we offer a range of solutions to help airlines, railway and bus companies to optimize their revenues and capacity; we count air cargo industry leaders among our customers, such as Emirates SkyCargo, Qantas, United Airlines and Atlas Air.
What led to the decision to launch a dedicated air cargo team?
We have a clear strategy: increase our product offer and become a major player as a solution provider in the Air Cargo industry. We have grown the team and are already working on these new products – our intent is to offer software and data science expertise in several strategic areas, like pricing.
Does this require training for first time users? How long does learning the software take?
As a matter of fact, we are launching a new training platform on our software in Q1 2022. This will make the life of our users easier, with most questions they tend to have being answered directly inside the app. In any case, the learning curve is quite fast, as we try to make systems that are as user-friendly as possible. We apply best practices in the field of UX, which has proven to deliver value, particularly in terms of user adoption.
Is the Skypallet software already available in the market? Can you share who you are talking with on proof of concepts? From which markets or regions?
Not only is it available, it has been in production for almost 4 years. We have improved the solution year after year, and grown our customer base.
There are two main added values to consider with SkyPallet: the first one is what we call the ‘Volume Calculator’, which helps to optimize revenues through enabling volume-based pricing decisions. That means a quotation should not merely look at weight and water volume in order to quantify the space that will be sold to the customer, but also at operational volume.
The second one is the ULD & Flight optimization: based on real data, our studies have found that we can lead to an improvement of several percent in capacity optimization, which ultimately means substantial incremental revenue.
In terms of markets, we are addressing all regions : we are currently doing demos with several prospects from all continents.
Similar service providers I can think of are already offering automated cargo handling with robotics on ground as an end-to-end solution. For Wiremind, is this something you are looking to do as well? What would be your idea of an end-to-end solution?
We do offer an end-to-end solution, through our partnership with GPCSL, a company based in the UK that we believe offers the best solution in the market in terms of dimension capture. The solution integrates with SkyPallet to offer a seamless experience, and we definitely believe that blending the best expertise of both worlds (3D capture on the one hand and Optimization algorithms on the other) is the right strategic approach.
In terms of robotics on ground, I believe that there is a lot to do, and I know that GPC also offers solutions in that field, but at the moment we are focusing on the end-to-end optimization: ‘from quotation to booking to build-up.’
How has the pandemic changed your operations, culture and vision? For a tech company such as Wiremind, what are the open jobs and what type of people, partner or client are you looking for?
In the tech space, if you are not attractive to candidates as a company, you will not succeed. You can have a good product, but in the long run your growth and stability will also largely depend on what team you have to run, maintain and improve that product. The pandemic has not really changed our culture, which I see as a good sign. Of course, like everybody else, we have adjusted our organization to be remote-friendly, but this was already the case before, so we can’t say it has been a huge disruption of our values or habits.
In terms of open jobs, we are always looking for high-level software engineers and data scientists, with a passion for solving complex problems in an international context.
