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5 Business values that become increasingly important
By Edwin Schuijt, Technical Director at ShipitSmarter
In today’s world it’s not only about what you sell and how you ship it. Your business values become steadily more important to attract employees, extend customer relations and create new business opportunities. In a post-COVID era, the war for talent will continue and your customer experience will either drive or destroy your business. These are the 5 business values that become increasingly important and become part of your strategic plans.
1. Extra charges or a fair profit? You must choose!
Shipments executed near or below cost price are a harsh reality, prompting a race to the bottom. Increasingly, transporters have introduced extra charges for additional services, obfuscating the real shipment price causing dissatisfaction among customers and rendering long term pricing agreements useless. We foresee a future where these additional charges are included in the shipment price for the sake of transparency. Also, we see logistics parties moving away from long–term partnerships that yield lower margins, giving instead all parties better visibility of shipment pricing and risks, and boosting the financial health of shipping providers that offer good services.
2. Environmental footprint reduction is a business essential
In the past, the environmental footprint as a driving force in business was only a minor consideration. However today, public awareness, political pressure and the consequences at stake are just too high. The environmental footprint is often mistakenly labelled “the carbon footprint”. But there is so much more contributing to the environmental impact: fuel efficiency ratios, cradle to cradle manufacturing burdens, NOx, CO emissions, rubber degradation and micro rubbers, among many other resources that need to be registered. We believe that measuring the environmental footprint has a large role to play in business. Easy registering would be key in visualising and reducing our ecological footprint.
3. Social footprint will become an important value driver
In addition to the environmental footprint, the social footprint from our economic activities are under increased scrutiny; drivers living out of their trucks and being away from home six days a week; warehouse employees being forced to work long hours or even working double shifts; low wage workers from other regions replacing the local workforce; city centres filled with heavy delivery vehicles; school areas at risk and motorways filled with endless queues of lorries. More and more organisations, both shippers and delivery providers, will be held accountable for taking responsibility in every step in the supply chain. Optimising for the social footprint will become an important value driver
4. Quality of Service with focus on customer experience
Shippers are not simply transporting goods, they provide customers their ordered goods in a way that satisfies both the customers and shippers’ needs. Our goal is to make sure shippers can focus on the primary business of providing goods with customer satisfaction. In other words, provide the best customer experience as possible. The focus on details such as carrier choice is becoming increasingly irrelevant. Instead, a trustworthy on-time delivery fulfilling customer expectation or even exceeding it is what counts. Whereas long–term contracting is a thing of the past, ensuring quality of service today means calling upon the shipping provider best suited to shippers’ needs at a given moment. No hassle, reliable, high service quality, extremely flexible and economically sound.
5. Corporate social responsibility needs transparency
Don’t just say you practice corporate social responsibility, prove that you do! Nowadays, the public, consumers, employees and all stakeholders expect businesses to care about corporate social responsibility. And what better way to prove it than being transparent about what you do and how you do it? By showing your efforts in reducing your ecological footprint, your ethical labour practices you can demonstrate your corporate social responsibility and respond to the ever-increasing demand for transparency.
Organisations that are prepared to adapt will thrive on the opportunities that lie ahead. These shipping trends mentioned in our blog series do not operate independently of each other, they build on and reinforce one another.
Curious how you can leverage on these increasingly important business values? Download our 3M Reference Case and discover how this multinational company drives its business through innovation.
