Why we built an AI-powered eCMR platform for the Western Balkans and the EU — our mission, our vision, and what this blog will bring you every week.
Today marks an important milestone for our team at bitsEverywhere: the official launch of eFTI Connect — our AI-powered eCMR platform for cargo transport and logistics — together with this website, which we intend to grow into a trusted source of knowledge on transport digitalization.
If you are an exporter, freight forwarder, or carrier operating in the Western Balkans or the EU, this platform was built for you. And if you are simply curious about where digital logistics is heading, this blog is for you too.
Why we built eFTI Connect
Anyone who has worked in road transport knows the ritual: printing CMR consignment notes, filling them in by hand, chasing signatures, faxing or photographing copies, and archiving stacks of paper that somehow still go missing when you need them most.
The numbers behind that ritual are sobering. Industry research shows that processing a paper CMR takes around 23 minutes per document, while an electronic CMR takes about 9 minutes. The cost per document drops from roughly €6.23 on paper to €1.69 in digital form — a reduction of over 70%. Multiply that by thousands of shipments per year, and the case for going digital makes itself.
But the shift to eCMR is not only about efficiency. It is about being ready for what is coming. The EU's eFTI Regulation (2020/1056) obliges authorities across the Union to accept freight transport information in electronic form, with mandatory application from 9 July 2027. Companies that digitalize now will cross that threshold calmly; those that wait will scramble.
eFTI Connect is our answer: a cloud-based platform that lets you create, share, sign, and archive electronic consignment notes in minutes — with AI that helps complete documents automatically, catches errors before they become disputes, and even extracts data from scanned paper CMRs. It speaks ten regional languages, follows the Open Logistics Foundation eCMR standard, and requires no installation. A QR code and a driver's mobile signature replace the paper trail.
Our mission
To make digital freight documentation simple, affordable, and accessible to every transport company — from a single-truck carrier to an international forwarding network.
Digitalization in logistics has too often been a privilege of large enterprises with big IT budgets. We believe a family-owned carrier in Novi Sad, Skopje, or Sarajevo deserves the same digital tools as a multinational operator in Rotterdam. That is why eFTI Connect is built to be used without training manuals, priced to be a no-brainer, and localized for the languages our region actually speaks.
Our vision
A European transport ecosystem where freight information moves as fast as freight itself — borderless, paperless, and trusted.
We picture a near future in which a truck crossing from Serbia into Hungary is not held up by document checks, because the inspector already has verified digital access to the consignment data. A future in which "where is the CMR?" is a question nobody asks anymore, because the answer is always: right here, one click away. The eFTI Regulation is making this future inevitable across the EU — our job is to make sure companies in our region are among the first to benefit from it, not the last.
What this blog will bring you
The platform is only half of what we launched today. This website is also our commitment to sharing knowledge. Every week we will publish a new article covering news, trends, and research from the world of digital transport, including:
- eCMR adoption across Europe and the e-CMR Protocol countries
- the eFTI Regulation and what it means in practice for carriers and forwarders
- transport digitalization case studies and measurable results
- digital logistics technologies — from electronic signatures and eSeals to AI-assisted document processing
- practical guides for companies making their first steps away from paper
Our sources will be the ones we ourselves rely on: the IRU, UNECE, the European Commission's DG MOVE, and the Open Logistics Foundation. No fluff, no recycled press releases — just information you can act on.
Join us on the road
The transition from paper to digital freight documents is the biggest change in road transport administration since the CMR Convention itself was signed in 1956. It is happening now, and it will define the next decade of logistics in Europe.
We invite you to explore the platform, try it with your own shipments, and come back here every week for a new article. If there is a topic you would like us to cover, write to us — this blog is for the community as much as it is from us.
Welcome aboard.
Move freight, not papers.
