“When measuring Vietnam’s assets, you might talk about the large population, the young workforce, the access to ports and commercial routes, the investment opportunities; but equally important is to look at Vietnam’s attitude, its resilient culture. The country’s consistent push for development and growth is a clear sign that enables me to be very confident in its future. And I would close with an example: look at how Vietnam has handled the pandemic and its commitment to overcome this difficult situation. Vietnam managed this with strength but also agility, showing that agility works at a country level as well, not just at the business level”.
Vlad Savin: Cristian, you have worked at Gebruder Weiss for over 18 years and being part of a company’s growth for such a significant amount of time says a lot about the company’s values and identity. What are some of these core values, and how do you and Gebruder Weiss leverage them to provide service excellence in the global supply chain?
Cristian Predan: That is correct, and service excellence is one of the company’s core values actually, its identity which we always thrive to project and develop. Within this framework, I think communication is one the cornerstone attributes that are extremely important for our stakeholders. From our experience, we acknowledge and understand that each of our clients is unique, and their expectations are different: some clients prefer and embrace digitization and automation, where they can actively manage and control their data and key information, and others prefer a more human approach, a more collaborative and personal interaction. We do not thrive to be the biggest company in the market, and we know we cannot always be the cheapest out there, however we try to ask ourselves, what kind of value we can bring to the customer? And if we see that we can align ourselves with their own particular goals and values, then we proceed together.
Vlad Savin: You are currently overlooking the Vietnamese and Singaporean operations at Gebruder Weiss. Can you share some of the major differences and similarities that stand out in respect to the people you work with, the clients you service and your business culture?
Cristian Predan: In Vietnam we see quite a lot of ‘basic service’ demand, for instance: “I have a shipment in Germany, please bring it from Frankfurt to Ho Chi Minh City airport, that’s all I need. I don’t need customs clearance, I don’t need payment of duties, etc.” In Singapore though, we see more demand for “complex services”, and customers are looking for a solution. Their approach is more comprehensive, where they would like to focus on their main business, they want to make sure that the logistics and the supply chain work, and these type of customers are seeking a complete solution. This is a major difference between Singapore and Vietnam, however Vietnam is evolving at a rapid pace, and more and more customers understand that they should focus on their core business and trust their logistics partners to manage their entire supply chain.
Looking at similarities, what stands out in our business culture in the logistics industry is the desire for personal contact, personal interaction. These personal relationships and communication models further lead to the development of extremely valuable prerequisites for our global business: trust and loyalty.
Vlad Savin: The impact of COVID 19 on the logistics and transport sector is unprecedented, with outcomes that may change the global supply chains forever. How is Gebruder Weiss navigating this ongoing crisis and what are they key lessons you have learned in this period?
Cristian Predan: The impact of the pandemic on our industry is massive. To have a clear picture of what this really means, let’s look at transport by air for instance: as you might know, 50% of all goods delivered across the globe by air are transported in the cargo hold of passenger flights; all of a sudden, when passenger flights were grounded, this 50% capacity disappeared over night. It’s a colossal disruption!
The lesson here is that you have to be agile, dynamic and these are leadership and organisation level lessons which need to be implemented vertically in the entire company structure. It is highly important to increase the level of flexibility within the business model, to enable the key decision makers and stakeholders to react fast to any changes in the supply chain. In our case, when we noticed the disruption peak earlier this year, where the offer, demand and the price had extreme levels of volatility, and it is impossible to handle such a dynamic situation with a strict, rigorous process.
Vlad Savin: Blockchain, e-brokerage platforms, autonomous fleets and big data management are changing the logistics industry, and innovation plays a substantive role. Gebruder Weiss is a 500 years old company, and obviously it has been through many changes since inception. What do you think the role of innovation is in maintaining Gebruder Weiss a market leader and what strategies do you have in place to achieve this?
Cristian Predan: You are right, currently the transport and logistics industries are most open to embrace these changes and the digitalization revolution. There is a significant amount of literature on the subject, and many ideas are circulating this space. We as a company monitor these ideas from our head office where we have a special team managing digital growth and constantly asses and test which one of these new developments might work for us. However in the same time, one of our key focus area, which is not so attractive for the media to report on, is represented by the day-to-day improvements in our processes, services and business model. I believe these are in many ways underestimated. Small refinements in your systems, in your procedures and processes, have a significant impact in long term, and in my experience sometimes matching the efficacy of some of these new digital disruptions we have talked about. But because these happen every day and are part of the growth and development of months businesses, they don’t get the same press.
The digital improvements are of course an area which we constantly pursue, and we do this for providing external visibility to our clients, enabling them to visualise and manage their supply chain in real time and for internal visibility as well, where we can improve the way we process our own internal data. In the same time, we have to watch over productivity, because the logistics industry is a high volume – low margin industry, and especially for us as a company it is consequential to always improve out tools so that we reduce the time spent by our staff with handling shipments, and use it for communicating and engaging with customers. In order to achieve this service excellence, we need innovation and disruptions to complement the day to day productivity improvements.
Vlad Savin: What is future of logistics in your opinion and what steps, actions is Gebruder Weiss taking to be part of it?
Cristian Predan: The industry is becoming more and more complex, because the expectations of the customers are becoming more complex. In the past, the industry functioned with service as a product, with a structured process behind it, but as the customers become more organised and diverse, these translates in a more comprehensive process and supply chain integration model. Digitalization and innovation are now becoming critical because they are the key tools to manage this increasing complexity of the industry.
Changes in our customers approach to environmental issues, social responsibility, safety, compliance and sustainable workflow are mirrored in real time and transferred to the entire supply chain and logistics providers. For instance, if a major retailer is looking to go green, become carbon neutral in the next 5 years, every single part of their supply chain has to follow automatically, otherwise they will be excluded.
Vlad Savin: How confident are you in the future of Vietnam on a scale of 1 to 10? And why?
Cristian Predan: It’s 9 because there is always room for improvement. I am very very confident, because i have spent over 8 years in Vietnam and I am aware how much they want to grow and succeed. When measuring Vietnam’s assets, you might talk about the large population, the young workforce, the access to ports and commercial routes, the investment opportunities but maybe equally important is to look at Vietnam’s attitude, its resilient culture. The country’s consistent push for development and growth is a clear sign that enables me to be extremely confident in its future. And I would close with an example: look at how Vietnam handled the pandemic, and its commitment to overcome this difficult situation. Vietnam managed this with strength but also agility, showing that agility works at a country level as well, not just at the business level.