The Team's Board Report - Mainfreight

7
New Zealand Logistics – Craig Evans
The Year of the Waltz
In September 2010 we took a
serious backward step, as a result
of the Christchurch earthquake.
The recovery effort from our team
was exemplary. We started to forge
a positive way forward with
encouraging momentum heading
into 2011, only to be sat on our
bums when the second quake hit in
February 2011. Four months on
and the same steely determination
has seen us take two large steps
forward, prompting
acknowledgement of human
resilience at its best.
The very greatest things - great
thoughts, discoveries, inventions -
have usually been nurtured in
hardship, often pondered over in
sorrow, and at length established
with difficulty through necessity.
We cannot conduct ourselves as
we did in the past. There needs to
be greater emphasis to improve
formal agreements with all our
customers, including business rules
that support our offering; all
lessons stemming from the
Christchurch events.
As a result we are already seeing
improvement, simply by formally
documenting each other’s
obligations. Whilst the beauty of
a handshake agreement has its
place, more complex involvement
warrants greater commitment and
clarity. We owe this level of duty of
care to our customers and
stakeholders alike.
Thank goodness Mainfreight
remains a learning, supportive
culture, all of which promotes a
willingness to get the job done,
Mainfreight Mobile now has its own floor scrubbing services,
ably demonstrated by Clayton Tito
at times pausing to acknowledge
the grief of personal tragedy, which
allows us to dust ourselves off and
stand strong.
It appears that the Logistics
business has finally awoken from
enforced hibernation, resulting from
a non-committal marketplace
during the global financial crisis.
We are busy developing proposals
and addressing renewed interest in
outsourcing as customers lose the
appetite to commit to fixed cost
infrastructure.
The New Zealand warehouses
embarked on a project of
excellence, by utilising the lull
diligently to ‘modernise’ image
and processes to be ready to
differentiate our product with the
eventual upturn.
These projects were broken down
and assigned to certain branches
tasked with challenging and
perfecting systems. We are now
well positioned to take these
learnings and adopt them across
the rest of the branches with
expediency.
Thank you to the teams that
helped with these projects.
Your commitment and energy to
challenge and re-invent the way we
need to conduct ourselves in the
future has played a large part in
taking positive steps forward. This
waltz is far from over and the world
really is our stage. Now with the
inclusion of the Wim Bosman
family, exciting opportunities and
the sharing of new ideas will help
take us to even greater heights.
The Old Saying that Customers are Always Right is a Fallacy
In the face of customer demands,
we are not employed to agree
without question or leave illogical
thoughts unchallenged. It’s our
duty of care to provide expert
opinion and help test and improve
outcomes in the interests of
Mainfreight and our customers
alike.
To be a 100-year company we must
always seek improvement
internally, and externally in the face
of our customers. Remember
customers may know what they
want; it’s our role to provide what
they need; to achieve their wants.
This is all basic sales training when
we started off in sales nappies,
nothing has changed. Yes, it’s
possible that we can be overaccommodating
to the customer’s
detriment, often setting both
parties up to be disappointed, all
because we never had the courage
to speak up.