In a disruptive environment, how can the logistics sector ensure a flexible yet robust and stable service to their clients?

Dear Members and Friends,

The China-Italy Chamber of Commerce is glad to share an article published by our Member Gi Group:

A key phrase for our 2021 world must surely be “disruptive environment”, for obvious pandemic related reasons, but also for the way that the logistics sector is undergoing huge changes in line with increasingly complex demands from their clients, who in turn are facing entirely new challenges. It is vital that the logistics industry operations are perfectly aligned with those of their clients in a world that is concurrently unpredictable and fickle, whilst decisively marching forward into the digital economy.

Indeed, a pivotal role of the logistics and transport sector is also in supporting their clients who are tackling those e-commerce and digital economy issues, whilst at the same time expanding into new markets and ensuring the supply of goods across borders with speed, security, agility and adaptability.

China's logistics sector reported rapid growth in the first half of the year. The foreign trade rose 27.1 percent year on year to 18.07 trillion yuan (about 2.79 trillion U.S. dollars) in the first six months.

To further push the growth of the sector, China's State Council released guidelines on accelerating the development of new forms and models of trade, good opportunities for the enterprises to catch, with the advice to sharpen their product and brand competitiveness and further expand their markets.

Even though China market is quickly recovering, the pandemic’s unexpected immense pressure on the logistics network has highlighted in the harshest way how companies need to be resilient and highly flexible. In fact, the traditional development of medium and long-term strategies has proven effectively defunct.

So that begs the question, where to go from here? Solutions need to be flexible and robust/stable, applicable across several countries yet sufficiently diverse in each to respect the national culture and norms, make sense economically, and bring additional positives into the company value chain. It’s a really big ask.

Outsourcing is a fully viable option that meets many of the requirements; a sector that is growing in both developed and developing markets. Indeed, it is estimated that Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) will reach $350 – 400 billion by 2025. These figures reasonably demonstrate that organisations appreciate outsourcing’s added value.

However, outsourcing doesn’t necessarily come without risks; externalisation potentially results in less internal integration, decreased stability and safety for workers and consequently lower quality in services and performance. So what are the options to ensure that this doesn’t occur?

Logistics companies need to both reflect and analyse their internal frameworks to ensure that they commit with absolutely the right partner and their available workforce to meet their individual demands. Thus, it goes without saying, that your outsourcing partner should be selected with due diligence.

An advanced outsourcing specialised partner assists in optimising both staff coverage and processes and add support by constantly improving procedures, efficiency and workflows too. It bases the contracts on financial and legal transparency for all involved, adapting its approach and operations according to the cultural background of the location in question.

No better outsourcing partner than GI BPO.

GI BPO approach consider the people perspective: client care is characterized by fully integrated bi-directional dialogue and “people power”, whereby employees are actively engaged in promoting diversity and professional growth as well as in solving work-life balance issues, all of which enable empowerment, ensuring better output and qualitative standards. We also pay attention to company’s resources savings aspect, applying waste optimisation (detecting and troubleshooting those activities which detract from the value chain) and focusing the entire team on efficiency practices.

As the outsourcing partner of choice for logistics companies around the world, Gi BPO can help those companies keeping world trade connected be at the very top of their game.

Gi Group

Gi Group is one of the world’s leading companies providing services for the development of the labour market. The Group is active in the fields of temporary and permanent staffing, search and selection, HR consulting and training, as well as in a variety of complementary activities.