Expert Council Digital Transformation with Concrete Recommendations

After the Expert Council for Digital Transformation in Transport & Logistics outlined a vision for the digitalization of road freight transport by 2035 last year, it is now building on this with concrete action recommendations. The aim is to encourage and support transport companies to implement digitalization pragmatically and step by step, as the use of modern IT can help them tackle challenges in many areas.

(Hannover) Among the challenges are the efficient fulfillment of regulatory and legal requirements, the transparent recording of (additional) services for billing, and the reduction of manual, time-consuming, and error-prone tasks, such as in shipment management. The action recommendations will be presented in June 2025 as part of the official conference program at the transport logistic trade fair in Munich.

To advance digitalization in the transport sector, the Expert Council for Digital Transformation in Transport & Logistics not only developed a catalog of obstacles and solution scenarios in its working sessions last year but also formulated a vision for the digitalization of road freight transport by 2035. To turn this vision into reality, the Expert Council supports the digitalization process in 2025 with concrete action recommendations. The focus is on easily implementable solutions related to truck transport that can quickly and clearly provide efficiency advantages.

The focus is on three areas:

• Compliance with regulatory and bureaucratic requirements
  The Expert Council sees a high burden on transport companies in fulfilling regulatory requirements such as the new Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD)-compliant reporting or proving compliance with cabotage rules.
• Waiting times at the ramp
  The documentation of unplanned downtimes at shippers is often associated with significant manual effort. Information can be lost, and proving the downtime becomes difficult. As a result, many downtimes go unbilled.
• Automated transmission of shipment data
  Despite numerous available digitalization solutions, a significant portion of shipments is still processed manually. This leads to additional effort, friction losses, and sources of error.

For all these areas, the Expert Council proposes concrete action recommendations in a paper and lists further sources and communities to contact as examples. It primarily targets small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the transport sector. For this reason, the action recommendations have been prioritized for areas that, on one hand, cause high effort and, on the other hand, can achieve quick successes with relatively little effort.

Expert Forum at transport logistic 2025

The action recommendations will be presented for the first time at transport logistic 2025. As part of the official conference program of the trade fair, the Expert Council will provide insights on the topic “Digitalization: How Forwarders Master the Change” on June 4 from 4:30 PM to 5:30 PM in the forum of Hall A1. The world’s leading trade fair for logistics, mobility, IT, and supply chain will take place from June 2 to June 5, 2025, in Munich. In addition to the expert forum, the Expert Council plans to provide practical assistance to SMEs in the transport sector on specific topics of digital transformation in various formats in the second half of the year.

Development of Concrete Action Recommendations

“With the roadblocks and the vision of digitalization in road freight transport by 2035, we have laid the theoretical foundations for developing concrete action recommendations in 2024. Now we will move into practice and support transport companies with practical assistance in digital transformation,” emphasizes Professor Thomas Krupp, one of the two chairpersons of the Expert Council. The co-chair of the Expert Council and managing partner at AXIT.capital, Frauke Heistermann, adds: “With our action recommendations, we want to alleviate the fear of digitalization, especially for SMEs. We are convinced that every company can achieve digital transformation by approaching it step by step. In the end, companies can only benefit from it, as digitalization makes them safer, more efficient, and simplifies the effort required to comply with legal requirements.”

Photo: © VDO/Continental / Image Caption: Back row (l. to r.): Volkmar Knaup (VDO/Continental), Prof. Dr. Thomas Krupp (Technical University of Cologne), Dr. Petra Seebauer (Logistics Competence Center (LKZ) Prien)
Front row (l. to r.): Prof. Dr.-Ing. Heinz-Leo Dudek (DHBW Ravensburg), Bernhard Schmaldienst (Transporeon), Frauke Heistermann (AXIT.capital)