Data & standards
Building the cross-border network.
Notes from RSA XB on cross-border logistics, AI tooling, and building software-first networks for freight forwarders, consolidators, and 3PLs.
Data & standardsEvery carrier already speaks the same codes. Your stack still invents new ones
Every IATA carrier speaks the same status codes. There is still no usable open-source library for tracking an air waybill. The reusable public asset here is the standard, not the code — and we got one important detail wrong first.
Pavan Kumar TV6 min read
Data & standardsDigital rates still arrive as Excel with the rules in column G
Every logistics company wants digital rates. Everyone's rates arrive as an Excel file with a unique shape, rules buried in footnotes, and a version that changed last week. Here's why that's genuinely hard rather than just annoying.
Pavan Kumar TV8 min read
Data & standardsThe tracking event that matters most is the one that never arrives
Visibility dashboards are built to display events that arrived. The expensive failures are silences — a milestone that was skipped, or a shipment that stopped reporting. Those need a plan to detect.
Pavan Kumar TV6 min read
Data & standardsThe AWB isn't born yet when the pain starts
Most freight systems make the air waybill the parent record. But the AWB doesn't exist for the first leg of a shipment's life, and stops existing before the last. That's a modelling bug with a delivery date attached.
Pavan Kumar TV6 min read
Data & standardsHalf the world's addresses aren't addresses
In the Gulf, an address is a building name, a community and an emirate. There's no postcode to check it against. Here's the architecture that worked, the instinct that didn't, and what it costs to maintain.
Parvez Alam6 min read