CHAMP Cargosystems: Establishing Global API Governance for Scalable Innovation

Client Overview

CHAMP Cargosystems is a leading global air cargo IT provider, offering software, connectivity, and digital solutions to airlines, ground handling agents, freight forwarders, and logistics partners. It operates in over 11 global offices, enabling broad reach across international air freight ecosystems.

CHAMP has long invested in API infrastructure. For example, launching a Cargospot API Partner Program to foster integration and innovation in the air cargo ecosystem.

Business Challenge

As CHAMP embarked on a digital transformation journey, it confronted a complex problem:

• Over 10,000 APIs across multiple teams and locations.
• A user base of 550+ individuals spread across 11 global offices.
• Volume objectives of 10 million API calls per month or more (CHAMP reported achieving 10M+ API calls in August 2022).
• A leadership mandate for API monetization and standardization across a fragmented architecture.
• Need for a single source of truth, strong traceability, and consistent governance practices globally.
• Tight deadlines, high API usage demands, and the challenge of preserving quality while scaling rapidly.

Essentially, CHAMP needed a governance solution that could keep pace with its growth, remove inter-team friction, and embed compliance and visibility into its API ecosystem without slowing down innovation.

Approach

To meet these challenges, the Xapi team proposed a hybrid governance strategy combining central oversight with local flexibility:

1. Unified Governance Platform Deployment

    A single SaaS-based governance layer was deployed across CHAMP’s global environment. It provided consistent controls, monitoring, and
    policy enforcement across all APIs.

2. Design-First Standardization

    Governance was pushed upstream into API design. Standards and templates were established to enforce compliance, reuse, and     interoperability early in the lifecycle.

3. Decentralized Autonomy under Central Rules

    Each team retained some operational flexibility, but within guardrails set by central governance. This allowed local teams to evolve services
      while conforming to global policies.

4. Full Traceability & Auditability

    Xapi built logging, lineage, and dashboards into the platform so that every API version, change, or invocation could be traced and visualized     centrally.

5. Incremental, High-Impact Rollout

    The rollout was staged to manage risk. Core critical APIs were governed first, then gradually expanded to user-facing and partner APIs.

Solution Highlights

• SaaS Governance Engine with modular enforcement and monitoring.
• Central API Catalog & Registry consolidating discovery across teams.
• Lifecycle Controls enforcing versioning, deprecation, and evolution rules.
• AI-driven Discovery & Review capabilities (where applicable) to flag anomalies or non-standard APIs.
• Role-Based Access & Ownership Designation to assign accountability.
• Real-Time Dashboards showing invocation trends, compliance violations, and usage metrics.

Results & Outcomes

Quantitative Impact

• Successfully enabled 10 million+ API calls/month while maintaining reliability and governance.
• Brought 10,000+ APIs under governed management.
• Engaged 550+ users across 11 offices within the governed environment.
• Reduced manual oversight overhead by automating compliance and policy enforcement.

Qualitative Impact

• Stronger collaboration across global teams, aligning on shared standards.
• Full lifecycle visibility and traceability, reducing miscommunication and duplication.
• Reduced friction in governance, making policy compliance less of a drag on delivery velocity.
• Laid a foundation for future API monetization by increasing trust, visibility, and reusability.

One public milestone validating CHAMP’s API strategy: CHAMP recorded 10 million API calls in August 2022, a sign of the broad adoption and scale of its API ecosystem.

Forward Outlook & Lessons Learned

• Governance needs to be embedded early, especially in API design, to prevent inconsistent architectures.
• Hybrid governance (central rules + local flexibility) can balance control with innovation.
• Visibility, traceability, and compliance become strategic assets, they enable monetization, scaling partnerships, and trust across ecosystems.
• Strong governance can be a competitive differentiator in high-regulation domains like aviation.

As CHAMP moves forward into advanced initiatives such as IATA ONE Record integration, its foundation in governance positions it well to scale data sharing, interoperability, and innovation across its global ecosystem.

[Customer Quote]

[Solutions Architect Quote]

“Helping CHAMP govern thousands of APIs across a globally distributed environment required more than just tools, it demanded structure, visibility, and automation. With Xapi, we implemented a unified governance layer that automated compliance, enforced design standards, and delivered full traceability without slowing development. The result was a dramatic reduction in manual oversight and a solid foundation for secure, scalable API innovation across their ecosystem.”
[Full Name, Designation]