Digitisation is accelerating across South Africa’s transport sector, with operators increasingly adopting digital tools to improve visibility, efficiency and decision-making.
According to Renko Bergh, co-founder of CtrlFleet, the industry is experiencing what he describes as a “perfect positive storm” for digital adoption, driven by disruptions, operational pressures and growing demand for real-time logistics.
Speaking at a Transport Forum event in Cape Town last Thursday hosted by CtrlFleet, he said the pace of technology uptake in the logistics sector had increased sharply over the past few years.
“One of the positive outcomes of Covid is that the operators in the transport space truly were forced to digitise in so many areas where paper-based process flows were still evident and were still dominant.
“That completely shifted the landscape and we found ourselves at a stage where transport operators need to, want to and are adopting digital technologies at a very fast rate.”
Industry data suggests the shift was well under way, said Bergh, noting that about 60% of South African operators were now “appifying” their operations.
“That is a large number. If you were to look back two or three years ago, that figure would have been dramatically lower. We are now in that perfect storm where the adoption of technology is wide and broad-scale,” he said.
Globally, 71% of transport organisations were prioritising digitisation from boardroom level through to operational execution, reflecting the growing role of technology in freight operations, he added.
According to Bergh, digitisation has become the fuel to drive business.
“Obviously, there are always challenges when it comes to embracing technology. Skills shortages being one of them.”
He said digital adoption, while increasing, also remained uneven across the country.
“Large corporates are much further along the digitisation journey, while in the small and medium enterprise (SME) sector it looks dramatically different. In some cases, manual documentation is still king.”
But change was happening, he stressed.
“If you operate in the transport space, documentation is critical. That area is starting to digitise rapidly and we are seeing the role that drivers play in the cab increasingly directing that digitisation. We are moving gradually from reactive decision-making to more proactive decision-making. You can only get there if you have the data available to make those types of decisions.”
He added that siloed operations were also beginning to integrate more closely.
“That integration is happening not only internally, but also between transport operators and the partners they work with, such as clearing agents, clients and warehouse operators. Those systems and processes are becoming more entwined and integrated.”
Bergh said that in comparison with global standards, the technology being developed locally was comparable to that used in international logistics markets.
“We have had the privilege of working in regions outside South Africa and Africa. We have been encouraged by the fact that the technology we build here does not fall behind what is being developed elsewhere in the world.”
