Charles Brewer is the global CEO of DHL E-commerce with 33 years of experience in Logistics across the globe. He has been Chief Executive Officer of DHL eCommerce at Deutsche Post AG since June 2016. He served as Executive Vice President of Sales and of DHL Worldwide Express and served as its Member of the Management Board, US since March 2006.
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Charles Brewer is the global CEO of DHL E-commerce with 33 years of experience in Logistics across the globe. He has been Chief Executive Officer of DHL eCommerce at Deutsche Post AG since June 2016. He served as Executive Vice President of Sales and of DHL Worldwide Express and served as its Member of the Management Board, US since March 2006.
Discover more details here.
Some of the highlights of the episode:
Follow us on:
Instagram: http://bit.ly/2Wba8v7
Twitter: http://bit.ly/2WeulzX
Linkedin: http://bit.ly/2w9YSQX
Facebook: http://bit.ly/2HtryLd
Hello and welcome to the leaders in supply chain podcast. I am your host throughout Palomar, you global logistics and supply chain practice head for Morgan Phillips Executive Search. My job is to connect you with local experts, thought leaders and executives in all things supply chain. I will do my best to pick their brain on leading edge technologies, sharings on talent development, leadership and key skills for the future as well as personal success habits. This is episode two and it is my pleasure to have as a guest, Charles Brewer. He is one of the global figures in a logistics currently CEO of Dhs News Business Unit, DHL ecommerce. Stay tuned as we cover key topics in e commerce globally discussed skills much needed in the industry as well as listen to Charles take on why e commerce is sexy. Without further ado, here is episode two. Hello
Speaker 2:Buddy and welcome to our second episode of leaders in supply chain and logistics podcast. We're delighted to have together with us today, Charles Brewer, global CEO of DHL ecommerce. Charles is a proven expert in supply chain, international shipping and ECOMMERCE with over 32 years of industry experience across Europe, Asia, Pacific, Americas, and Africa. Charles, welcome and thank you for joining us. Thank you. Ready? So for today we'll have a series of questions coming from our audience and followers broadly. We'll split it into three categories, industry in ecommerce related questions, uh, talent and career development questions. And lastly, questions regarding personal advice that you might want to share with our audience. Charles. Um, maybe let's first, uh, start with a bit of an introduction about yourself, more importantly about DHL, ecommerce and ecommerce in general and where the industry is today.
Speaker 3:Sure. So thanks for that. And uh, thank you to your listeners for listening to this podcast. I hope it's in informational. I hope that they get a lot out of it, but, um, to the question. So yeah, as you mentioned, 33 years with DHL, I've worked in some fantastic places around the world. Uh, or anything. I went to 37 out of 52 countries in Africa, which is a beautiful place ever. Those, I've never been to Africa. I highly recommend it. So it's a fantastic place. Worked in America, uh, which was, uh, which was, uh, incredibly exciting, very energetic, huge organization, huge business over there, and started life in Europe. So I'm UK by birth, English by birth and Arsenal fan for those, uh, football followers out there. Uh, married two lovely children, three dogs, two hamsters in a couple of cats. So[inaudible] family. Um, and yeah, I've been, I've been back at, or been running DHCP commerce now for about a year and three or four months, um, which is fantastic. It's great. So I love, obviously loved the HLP. We did a very long time as a great company. Uh, one of the world's largest employers, uh, geographically, one of the world's largest. And I was told a great story once by a national geographic photographer in Africa actually, who told me there wherever he was in Africa could be in a desert up a mountain in the forest, wherever he was. There are always two things he could find DHL and ed coke. Um, so I think that's a great sort of example of how big DHL is doing. Grand recognition. Yes, it's really fantastic. And, uh, I love ecommerce. So I've, I've been involved in ecommerce, the subject for the last three, four, five years. Um, I think most people know it's hugely exciting, uh, forecasted to be three point 4 trillion by 2020. About a third of that cross border and two thirds domestic, B to c growing everywhere. Uh, the CEO for DPD, HR, frank capital off and asked me where next Charles and I said, take your pick on a map. It's a, it's huge, uh, many, many, many markets. A hugely embryonic home. I mean, I'll, although it's been around sort of five, 10 years, it's still incredibly Nelson and I'm a huge upside. So we're right at the beginning of the, of the product curve, which makes life and every day very, very exciting. But it's also a fair few challenges, which I'm sure we're going to talk about, but that keeps me sane and sensible. So, yeah. Good stuff. Thanks for the intro. Um, so we'll deep dive into the industry or ECOMMERCE focused questions that we've had a couple of very good questions from our audience. So there John Long actually from Vietnam. He's uh, he's asking how do you see DHL ecommerce in the next five years? Um, and also if you want to give more specifics into Southeast Asia particularly. Yeah. And, uh, again, thanks for the questions. So, um, so I think, you know, we started our ecommerce journey back in 2014 in fact in Barcelona, beautiful city as well, by the way. And where we sort of launched our 2020 strategy. And included in our 2020 strategy was, uh, three pillars, which was focus, connect and grow. So those are three things we focus on, focus, connect and grow. And under our growth pillar, um, like most male operators, postal operators around the world, we recognize that ecommerce and the parcel ecommerce business is huge. So we set about developing our strategy towards that and really sort of aiming to be sort of the leading logistics provider for ecommerce, the ecommerce sector. So that started in 2014 and we've been at it now for like two or three years and developing our footprints in Europe and rest of world. So to the question that had, I think, uh, you know, first and foremost, we continue that journey. Um, you know, we want to have, you know, we want to position Dhl as, uh, the provider of choice for the ecommerce sector, particularly around, you know, three main activities. So domestic delivery, so that's pick up in a country delivering country. So all of those who order online get their products when they say that when we say they should, uh, or when they want them. And um, second one is cross border. So we focus obviously a lot on cross border, both right express business, DHL express business, and also through our ecommerce, uh, business units. So that's a huge and growing really, really fast growing at 27% or forecasted to grow at 27% between now and 2020. So huge opportunity around cross board. And then the third one is fulfillment. Fulfillment is, you know, again, because I worked for DHL, I have a slight, slightly luxurious position that we have a great business unit called DHL supply chain who has the largest or warehouses in the world. And so we access those foot, that footprint to provide pick and pack kitting and a few other things besides to do with fulfillment. And I think for film is going to become increasingly more interesting as we go forward. So, uh, the, the way that people order, um, both domestically and cross borders changing almost daily. But one of the sort of key trends is this trend of sort of on demand. You know, when I order my shirt I wanted in the next day, minimally, maybe even same day and the next hour in some cases. Um, so, um, uh, having product or allowing customers to per product as close to their consumers as they possibly can is becoming increasingly important. So both in large markets like the US where we're seeing sort of what was sort of single warehouses going now to multi warehouse or globally where you're doing forward, uh, fulfillment or destination for format, where you place product and then you're able to pull from that product inventory and deliver really fast is growing really, really quickly. So simplistically, you know, three key areas for us, domestic delivery, cross border and fulfillment. And connecting those three to provide an end to end solution I think is one thing. Secondly, in terms of Southeast Asia, Southeast Asia is fantastic. I mean, you know, as a great example of what I was saying earlier about how embryonic this industry is. So you've got a huge population, 630 plus million people rapidly, massively changing markets. You know, I was here 10 years ago or so, or 15 years ago and southeast Asia has changed hugely in that time and now the infrastructure's pretty good despite what people say. I think the infrastructure pretty good. Um, you've got a very, very young population, a young population with more disposable income, very, very tech savvy, Internet savvy. So they don't sit at their desktop. So ordinarily do it from the phones. We know that anything between 30 and 60% of orders, or at least inquiries come through mobile, mobile commerce. So Southeast Asia is really, really exciting. Countries like Indonesia with more than 250 million people, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Philippines, all Vietnam, fantastic market. We just opened up there just recently. So Southeast Asia is really, really exciting. Um, so yeah, we've started our journey, uh, in Southeast Asia and a year or so ago we opened Thailand. Um, more recently we opened Malaysia and Vietnam and there's a couple more to come yet. Yeah,
Speaker 2:look forward to it. And I mean I was, I was to do it on your searing, I was reading just the other day, I think it was economic development board in Singapore, but there's a few statistics that are just mind blowing in terms of the growth, uh, of Southeast Asia and particularly it's Vietnam is Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines. Um, so I think that that coupled with the growth of ecommerce as well as a, another statistic which was very interesting is that China will probably be the first nation worldwide to go cashless. And they just, it's incredible the way the, the, the trajectory goes and it goes very well with the ECOMMERCE trends as well and people being more and more, uh, online savvy,
Speaker 3:tech savvy and just, they just grow with it. So I think it's fantastic. Marcus, who you guys and you know, again, you know, they're really exciting. I mean it's exciting anyway cause it's already huge. Um, but it's so embryonic, you know, it's, you know, between three and 4%, maybe just over 4% of what's bought in shops is bought online or bought in, Rita's bought online. So it's really, you know, 96% upside. Um, which is enormous. It's going to grow at 25% between now and 2020 the ecommerce sector. So huge growth numbers, um, few challenges here or there, but generally speaking, massive upside. So it's, I think Southeast Asia is a great example for me of where ecommerce, the subject sits today. You know, everybody wants to do it and he, I actually go back one question in terms of why there are probably other question, why, why, why is ecommerce so exciting? The first words, why are people buying online? If you take'em and you know, again, just give you one or two examples. So you're in the Philippines have something like 2,700 islands, Indonesia, 250 million people, the biggest archipelago, you know, they just don't have access to stores and shops in the same way. As you know, respectfully, if you're in London, it's a very different environment. Do you ever walk out your door and you can buy those trainers or the laptop or the phone? Anyway, so a lot of these markets, you know, lot of consumers don't have immediate access to the products that they want to have access to. So, um, you know, that's what's driving this, this growth. And uh, you know, that sort of, again, going back to the point about it's still very embryonic, but if you, you know, you look at the u s and the, the shuttering of retail stores, which is huge. I mean, absolutely enormous. Um, somebody else the other day when, you know, is it too late? I said, I think like the train's left the station. So huge growth in Southeast Asia. A huge growth opportunity. Lots of people please Karen shopping online. It's been fun. Exactly. Yeah. Um, a very good question. Also from Krishna. Um, thank you. Christmas. She's, she was asking how do you see commerce and retail in the future future? Will they compete, coexists? Will they be sending synergies? I think it's a question on a lot of people's hearing. I mean that's sort of what sort of where I ended the last question, which is, you know, I think, you know, if you think about it logically, I was asked this just recently, I was in Australia just recently. I was down there doing a business review with the team and looking at that market, which is also very exciting. And, um, I was asked during an interview, so why, why do people shop online? You know, and I was explaining, I'd been away for a couple of weeks and I was going home that weekend. And, uh, you know, if my wife said to me, look, we need to go and buy some toothbrush and toothpaste, you know, do I want to do that or do I want to spend the morning, my two days at home with my children? And the answer is I want to spend the two days at home with my children. So I think there are a number of factors that are driving people away from, from retail. One is, you know, it's, it's, it's relatively inconvenient for what people want to do with their lives. Secondly, pizzeria now you have choice. You can have things delivered to your house, you can have things delivered to the back of your car, you can have things delivered by drone or whatever method. So it's much more convenient to have it to shop online. Um, there's much more choice online. So, so I think, uh, if you look at sort of statistically, and again as I mentioned, the u s has seen this, um, huge shuttering of retail source. I think the biggest and the last 10 years or so, um, or the large number of shops are closed in the last 10 years or so. So, um, again, the evidence empirically points towards a pretty tough environment for the retail segment. That said, I think some of the stories that are written around it, retail is dead, I think are far too premature. Um, and to answer the question, I think there is a space and a reason why both would coexist. Um, I think it's important for the retail sector as, as some already have started to do, is to understand how do you remain relevant in today's world. You know, so if you accept and lots of retail owners don't want to accept it, but if he, except that I don't want to drive down on a Saturday morning to buy a toothbrush, then there has to be a different reason as to why it goes to the shop in the first place. And, and we're starting to see some evidence around retail, big retail malls, um, shifting and changing how they remain relevant. So becoming far more far, much more around family entertainment centers with ice skating, cinemas, restaurants, et cetera. In fact, the fastest growth in any mall is re is restaurant food. Yeah. Um, so, you know, I think recognizing how you remain relevant, number one, number two, and then that's a good example. Number two, you know, in the ecommerce sector and the consumer in particular, they want convenience and choice. That's really important for the consumer. And again, historically, you know, 94% of all deliveries were made to door to the doorstep. But the consumer doesn't want that and that's just how it was. Um, they didn't have any other choice. Now they, there is other choices and they are starting to say, we want more choice so you know, the consumer again or take myself as an example of that same example of the toothbrush and toothpaste. The Saturday morning that I'm going to spend with my children will probably be in the park or at the waterpark or whatever it may be. Therefore I'm not at home to receive the delivery. Therefore I would much rather pick it up from somewhere on the way back, um, and just drive through and pick it up or get out of the car and pick it up or whatever it may be. So I think, you know, the whole clicking collect, um, opportunity for retails are significant. And again, I think that my last point on the subject is so, so in summary, I absolutely believe they can coexist. Um, although I do believe that ecommerce is going to grow and he's growing much, much faster than what retail will. So you to carry on doing what Rita does, I think is a wrong, you've got to shift and pivot your all your proposition. Um, but the last, I think the last point is that, you know, leverage what you have as a strength and the strength you have is placement. Um, and uh, um, you know, if you've got 10 stores then there's 10 stores that can be used as collection points for customer. If you've got one, it's one store. Um, if you've got one store Omnichannel, you know, look at how you create an environment in your store where, you know, again, it's statistically proven today. A lot of people do a lot of research online and then go to the store. So make sure your store operates in the same fashion that they shop online. So, you know, again, there's lots of examples out there of becoming a great, using technology and digital to make sure the store, the store experience is as good as shopping online, if not better. It should be better. So I think, I think, you know, in summary absolutely can coexist. You just need to rethink how you remain relevant.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean it's, um, it's, it's not black and white and is not, the ECOMMERCE will not kill the, you know, traditional, not the other way around. It's just a matter of we struggled as humans to adapt fast enough sometimes. And that's the only think. Is this the only thing,
Speaker 3:um, another good question from car, uh, the, uh, who was wondering, do you see the growth of ecommerce as a threat, uh, to, to, to the traditional freight industry? Does it mean that more of this coming from ecommerce, let that means less freight move by traditional sea freight, air freight, any figures, evidence prove it? It's a very, very interesting question. And, uh, I think six singly and without sitting on the fence too much, it's an opportunity and a threat. Um, you know, the threat is that obviously that if you're ordering B to c, if you're ordering it, the consumer is ordering a single phone from a supplier as opposed to him. Yeah. The shop ordering multiple phones. Then there is some threat towards, you know, large palletize shipping of goods. The opportunity is that if you look at how, you know, the, the he tailors and marketplaces and the retailers want to operate, they're looking to lower the cost of distribution as best they possibly can. So, um, you know, we have some really good evidence and working on a lot of projects around how do we move low value BTC goods, um, ecommerce goods, particularly out of China into other regions, but without necessarily flying it as an example. So I'll give you, you know, or flying about flying at a less cost. So, uh, as an example, we are working very hard on developing a road freight solution into Southeast Asia, out of China. So today for the most part it is flown and the products are flying, but there's a great opportunity to road freight for take Vietnam at a southern China is very easy to get product from there to, into, into Vietnam. Now there all some governance and legislative issues around how you do that and we're working very, very hard to overcome those with the governments. And, um, uh, various other stakeholders. But I think that's a great example of how, you know, the freight forwarder falling in. So you can see'em ecommerce is a great opportunity. So developing, you know, road freight solution similarly with air freight, you know, so again, most retailers are working on how if and when they do have to fly it, how can they fly it at a lower cost in air freight is a great solution. It's just about how you connect that air freight solution into a last mile providers. So, um, I suppose if any of your listeners are in the air freight sector, we have plenty of last mile solutions and you connect into walls anywhere you like. Yeah. So we're, we've already developed a good solution using off our freight, forwarding the sister company, Dhl global forwarding where we air freight out of China, inject into Southeast Asia a clear locally and then inject into the last mile, last mile solution, which I think is, you know, from again, from the consumer's perspective, it gives them something between super fast and super slow at a more cost effective price for the, uh, for the shipper. So again, like I said, I think it's, there are some threats to it definitely, but I think it's like everything in life. You just have to look at it and say, well, what's the opportunity? And there's plenty of opportunities for the freight forwarder sector too.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. I mean, being, being relatively close to the industry myself, I'm just a, I guess the, again, just like with the traditional brick and mortar shops, um, the question to the three pillars is, are they fast enough to move, to adapt to become a ecommerce? If you are not sure, but I mean it's a that's again, back to the point. Yeah.
Speaker 3:The thing that's adaptable. The right, yeah. It's an interesting thing in life. Right? Do you know that? Um, and again, you see it so often unfortunately in business that this sort of a bit of an ostrich mentality to opportunities or threats, which is if I stay close, my ears closed enough, it won't affect me. The reality is ecommerce is going to affect everybody and the ecommerce sector. So, um, the trick is, is to sit back in a darkened room and think about how do I play in that space? Not How do I find that space, right. Yeah. The train has left the station, so you can't stop it. It's now about how do you successfully create a sustainable product and business in a very fast growing environment. We're not, we weren't, see, I don't think in our lifetimes we won't see such a massive impact on the logistic sector. The ecommerce will present. So, um, you better be on the right way. Even treaters to the upside as opposed to the other. You don't stand in front of the train. Right? Yeah.
Speaker 2:Um, it looks under Mexico, which I think is a good friend there from. Yeah. Um, so he asks, what are some of the ECOMMERCE trends, um, other than, so you give an example. So the ecommerce delivery lead times moving close to get it now solutions. What are the big trends do you see coming up for the ECOMMERCE?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I mean, I mentioned fulfillment already. I think that's really, really important as going to go into grow in, in port, in importance. Because as I mentioned, this sort of whole consumer on demand, um, culture is growing really rapidly. So, you know, the example I always give when, whenever, whenever I'm on stage as, you know, use my wife as an example, who is an international shopper, a professional ecommerce shop, most of my uh, discussed. Um, but um, you know, when she first started shopping online, it as, and we were living in America at the time. Um, I can remember, you know, she would say to me, Oh, you know, just shopping domestically, it's going to take three to six days to get delivered. And she thought that was fantastic. She thought that was amazing that it'd be three to six hours. In fact, when we moved to New York and the, and the, um, the, uh, the food delivery was sort of same day late and evening show that was even more amazing. But if you said to her today, yeah, it's gonna be three to six days, she would look at you like you're a Martian, you know, so, you know, the expectation of the consumer has changed significantly. So I think fulfillment's going to play a huge part, um, in satisfying that change, um, in particular destination for film it. So that's number one and linked to that. Number two, you know, again, historically cross border was called cross border. I don't think it is anymore. I think people just shop. Um, and so I think these sort of, you know, which is great news, I think for many, many, many people, which is, you know, if you're a, an SME in Malaysia who makes Great Batik shirts, the world is your oyster. People from all over the world will buy them if you're an Africa and making garments there. Same thing, you know, so, so I think, uh, the, the despite recent political noises for various countries around sort of becoming more parochial, I don't think it is, I think the world is much, much smaller. I think the board is becoming much, much simpler, more simpler, simple. Um, and the ability in the, and therefore the availability for people to buy from one country to another country, it's becoming easier and easier to use. So I think we're going to see, and statistically it says I'm going to grow at 27%. So we're going to see this sort of rise of, of um, people shopping from anywhere, buying anything from anywhere in the world. Um, and it'll get faster as well though. So we're seen as sort of speeds coming down. Um, I think on that point, the third trend would be speed. So, you know, give you a good example, going back about four or five years ago in the u s the average delivery times were sort of six to five to six days. Now there are two to three. Um, so those sort of speeds and delivery, both domestically and cross border are coming, are coming down. Um, because people want, their tolerance for time is less, so people, people want things faster and then we're going to see that. And then the last one, I think we're going to see this sort of rise and rise of alternate delivery, uh, uh, approaches. So yeah, so we're sitting here in Singapore today looking out on the city of Singapore and the Singapore government worked really hard and think about it a lot because they involve DHL and awful lot on how do we ensure that, um, the roads and the city keeps moving. And if you think about, um, as I said earlier on the sort of where we are in terms of the product development, so the example I always give is Indonesia, Indonesia. I think it's something like, you know, less than 1% of what's bought his bought online, but that less than 1% of what's bought represents 850,000 parcels a day. We imagine when it gets to five or 10 or 20%. And the same is true for Singapore and same is true from Malaysia. So I think you can't keep pushing the pig through the python, you know, the roads are going to clog and uh, you know, cities are going to slow down and that's not where I think all of us want to get to. So we work hard on, um, innovations around how do we get the order delivered to a customer without necessarily being in a car or a bike for that matter. So I think we're going to see that alternate delivery solution coming both from the logistics providers who have to, um, from, for lots of reasons, but cost being one of them. We're going to see that change alternative deliveries because the cities are going to demand that the major Metros in the world, you know, the Chicano artists of the world.[inaudible] Nairobi's the Lagos is the EEM. All the big cities in the world are gonna sort of demand that, um, logistics players find alternate solutions. And I think the consumer is too, I think the consumer, to my point earlier on, it's a win win for everybody because I don't think the consumer really wants it delivered to door. I mean, they should still have that choice, but I think actually they want the flexibility to have their order wherever and whenever they wanted. So I think that's probably the fourth trend. I think we're gonna see coming along and he's already coming up but changing pretty soon. Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:And a follow up question, uh, sort of sort of, um, uh, the results asking about technology trends is you mentioned is okay. Internet of things, you know, everybody's talking about it can, blockchain is another key buzzword. Word spoken a lot. Um, he actually specifically ask about the Internet of Iot, right? So He's, uh, he's asking any of you, what does iot deliver in practical terms for ecommerce or digital? Are we ahead or behind of the development group?
Speaker 3:Hmm. I think, well, the Internet of things is obviously a nice trending subject and lots of people are working and inventors of reality. The reality of how do we see that play in the business today? It's probably still fairly north and it's not an already developed just as just yet. But I suppose like Dhl, many companies are working on how can they use that? I mean, from, from our perspective, I think it, there's probably two key, key, key areas that we're working very hard on it as of how do we use data in particular to improve life. One is, you know, we, we capture obviously delivering a hundred thousand packages everyday around the world. Um, we capture a lot of data about consumer behavior when they order, where they order, how they do have it delivered till they have a dog, do they not have a dog. So we have a lot of data that I'm incredibly useful for lots of people, including us, but also for the marketplaces and Etos and retailers. So there's an opportunity for us to potentially commercialize that data and use that data to obviously for the marketplaces, but also for, um, also for improving our operations. Customizing your delivery younger. Yeah. So, so that's number one. Number two is a predictive data. So, um, the more data you have and the more you use that data, the more we can actually predict when you're going to order. So we would know Rodeo that you order a pizza on a Tuesday at 6:00 PM typically. And if we know that we can stage and plan our organization ordinary. So I think so. I think, um, I think in particular for us it's really about that sort of using the data in the form of data lakes or commercializing the data or using our data to either make the customer experience much better or make our operation more efficient. I think that's probably the biggest areas we're going to see change over the next few months. And the last point on tech is that, and I think I made it, I made the point on Linkedin is that, um, and I didn't really appreciate this when I first came into the ecommerce space, but I do now for logistics organizations to be successful in this space and to capitalize on the massive growth but also deliver a sustainable product. Technology underpins everything, absolutely everything. So, um, you know, again, I think as an organization organization, we've, we've realized that if we didn't realize it already realized that, um, over the last couple of years. And so we're investing very heavily in making sure we have the very, very best technology that allows us to really orchestrate routes that are the most efficient whilst providing a great customer experience. And that all comes from technology. I mean, great people, we have fantastic people, but the key in the commerce space, especially when you're dealing with pretty low margins, is that technology piece. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Um, now coming back to the part of it, the challenges of ecommerce. So there's a good questions. That's a good question from a, actually, it's kind of similar questions from the Jonathan Town and Brian Hang. They're more or less asking how can you actually make money in ecommerce? But I'll give you some, some context to it. So, uh, so for example, Brian is saying that, uh, many commerce players are so flooded with shareholders money. They seem that they have no issues in building, in house fulfillment. Last delivery capabilities. Um, you know, we've seen Lazada acquiring RedMart in, in, in Singapore. Red is a, an ECOMMERCE supermarket. Um, small niche players locally, like reborns, they are building their warehouses, brick, mortar looks Asia. There's another example, uh, close to Southeast Asia is going in into ecommerce. But, uh, I guess the, the, the bottom line, uh, you know, uh, kind of underpinning underlying question is can you actually, you know, on the longterm make this as a successful and profitable because it seems like a lot of people are throwing in Amazon. I've, I've read the statistics, they lost a billion on delivery. Of course they are. I'm making it up in other ways. But, uh, yeah. What's your thoughts on that?
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah. No, I think it's, uh, I, well actually I think, um, I'll give you three, three thoughts. One is it, you know, the playbook hasn't been written, so there was not many off the shelf examples that you can take and say that's the model that guarantees that I'll answer, that you can make money and have a sustainable product. So I think all of us who are playing in this space recognize the huge opportunity, recognize a growth opportunity and, and now are working out, uh, innovating and trying different methods to see which one I should develop a sustainable product. Um, so that's number one. Number two, um, from our perspective, that means that as I mentioned early on, we know that technology is definitely, yeah. The platform that gives you the best chance to create a sustainable solution from a, from a fiscal perspective. So we're investing very heavily in, in, in the technology side and aligned to that. We're testing different models. So I think here we're talking more about the last mile than fulfillment and cross border for, if I'm going across border already demonstrate they can make money. So this is him. Yeah. And there's more exhibiting related to the last part. They write the courier driving the van, all the bikes to and deliver product. So, and for those who are sort of unfamiliar with the, the question, the context of reason why it's a relevant question is that, um, unlike international shipping where, um, you know, the selling price could be between 30 and$60, uh, for, for a half kilo package going around the world. In the ECOMMERCE space, you've take Singapore's about three to$5 for next day delivery. In Indonesia it's less than$2. Um, so that, so the selling price in, in many of the markets for domestic delivery is pretty low and you have a similar cost base. So it means the margins are much, much more and it's much, much more difficult to make money, which is to the question. So to answer that technology underpins it. So the better your technology, the more, um, uh, orchestration you do and dynamic orchestration you do, um, to ensure that your career out to build the most efficient way, possibly the better. So again, 31 years ago when I started my life in Dhl, we would hand soar to packages, looking at a to zed manuals where addresses were and stuff like that. You know, if you, if you come at this in a manual way and you're going to die pretty quickly, it's, there'd be a bit of a bloodbath in terms of the financial results. And so you have to use technology to really orchestrate the most efficient routes you possibly can. And uh, you know, so if you go to our Thailand operation or two or Malaysia or Vietnam, um, we don't see supervisors or managers standing around looking at packages. It's all done the day before. It's all done through technology with live algorithms that are constantly taking in feeds. It's really incredible. I mean, it, you know, the, the system we use, which we partner with a great company, um, takes in feeds from, um, weather traffic, road closures, police escorts, whatever's happening on the, on the streets of Singapore or Malaysia or Vietnam or Thailand or Chile or the US or India or wherever it is we operate. It takes in real life feeds and orchestrates that career out to make it the most efficient. So do again, as an example for those may or may not be. So, um, I'm acutely aware of it. So, you know, if a career goes out the morning with 80 parcels and he heads off down the road and that road's closed because as a government minister going through, yeah, that's pretty much a day done. Um, so our clients and that our customers that are disgruntled yeah. And a lot of customers aren't happy so, so you lose customers, they don't go back on the shopping platform, you Costco to roof and to the question, you don't make money. Um, so you have to, you can't take this sort of static view of uh, streets and uh, the environment you're operating. It has to be more agile and nimble. So we use a lot of technology to, to really orchestrate those routes in an agile way so that we're constantly updating. It makes it as efficient as it possibly can be, which gives great customer satisfaction but also means that our, our couriers operated best possible efficiency going forward. So that's number one. Number two is, you know, there are sort of two ends of the spectrum. There is asset heavy and asset light and there are lots of bits in between. But if you take the two extremes, um, you know, in Thailand for example, we operate, uh, fully, uh, asset heavy yellow platforms. So the van is yellow, the building is yellow, the career, Dhl. Um, so it's very, uh, very much a yellow solution. Um, and that comes with a, but it also means you get great service, quality, great brand ownership, et cetera. Um, and then the other extreme is, and we're testing this as well, is an asset light models are crowdsourced or elastic delivery model, which is more like the signing our model, which Alibaba operate, where you own the technology and then you plug in the delivery providers. And the different delivery provided could be a mother going home from a sport event through to you. After interviewing me through whoever else, you just use your available capacity to go and do a delivery. And we're trialing that in America, in Chicago and Los Angeles. So we're trialing both with the intent of trying to find what provides the best consumer experience, what provides the best customer, the shipper experience, and also what provides the best cost experience. And when we get to the right answer, I'll tell you and let you know how we do it. But again, I go back to the original point I made, which is taken to an easier, there's 850,000 passes. Is there a day if we can work out the mouth right mouse trap, you can make money. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Perfect. Um, and then, um, among the final questions, uh, if, if we were to ask you, uh, can you simplify in a few sentences the most striking challenges you had to overcome when you set up and you're still overcoming, I'm guessing when you set up digital e commerce and now,
Speaker 3:um, well we're, we're very lucky. We don't experience probably some of the challenges that startups face if you're got a new countries to start up, you know, you have all sort of regulatory and legal aspects of setting up a new organization. Some countries can be really painful. So yeah, very, thankfully digital's been around for a long time. So we have great relationships and great history and great experience and most of these markets, so we don't face those. So our challenge is typically come, you know, to your, to your tray, your trends and your trade, which has people. Um, so ecommerce is still, as I said, a number of times very embryonic. So trying to find people with the experience in the space, um, is quite tough. And so, uh, so it's not like a traditional logistics where you can find a lot of people that worked in logistics industry for a long time. Not many people have worked in the ECOMMERCE sector for a long time. So that's probably one of the challenges is finding great people, uh, that fit our culture, fit our organization, fit the experience we're looking for and fit these sort of markets we want to work in. Um, so that's number one. The second one is, it's a, um, yeah, as I mentioned earlier, the infrastructure can be occasionally interesting. Um, so, uh, you know, you have to, and again, I think we're lucky because we have years of experience of working in environments that are sometimes very challenging. But if you're new to it and you go to some of these cities and some of the countries we operate in and you get floods or situations, it's not easy. So infrastructure can certainly be a change. I think from an ecommerce perspective it, we are the challenges we face from a, from a delivery perspective, the same as every other ecommerce logistics company that's operating in this space. It's all about trying to, you know, keep the ship the seller as happy as you possibly can and their happiness derives out of how happy you keep the consumer and also the price you charge. Um, so that can be a challenge. And obviously the consumer, um, you know, often as I said earlier, 94% of all deliveries are still two door and that can be challenging actually addresses in that that was more of an more of an ex a negative experience than I expected. So I know that the Middle East has, um, challenges with their addresses. I know there's some countries in Africa or charities, I didn't expect that in Southeast Asia, but Thailand is still quite challenging in terms of finding locations. And addresses. So I'm Vietnam actually. So, uh, address identification can be a bit challenging and going back to my point earlier around orchestrating that adds sense and costs a dollars in costs, so that can be a bit of an experience as well. Um, but yeah, getting the delivery, getting the delivery off to the consumer first time is an ongoing challenge for the ecommerce logistics provider. But I mean, and you know, very rarely do I tend to see these things more as opportunities than yeah. Than real challenges. They, that's what keeps us happy at during the day. We've got to work out the answers.
Speaker 2:Exactly. I mean, if the, if it wasn't hard, everybody would do it. Correct. Yeah. And you know, you can make a little money, but if everybody's doing it so correct. Correct. Um, and like everything in life, it takes time. So, uh, yeah. But that brings me to the point of the next grouping of questions and I guess it's about people in the, and I guess it was a nice leeway into a, yeah. The challenge of finding the right people. I do come from that business, from executive search firm, trying to find solutions to the people challenges that organizations face. And truthfully, you know, operate in this space of logistics, supply chain logistics is not sexy. I mean there is just a yeah, I know you disagree, but I wanted to prompt you with that. Um, and uh, I mean it's not, banking is not, I mean I'm not sure how I'll call sexy banking is nowadays. Maybe Fintech is six more days. Um, is not, it is not technology. So as a historically it's not perceived as a sexy place. Now I guess my question is to force the first challenged me on that part with them. You know, why you think it's sexy? But secondly also how, how can we make, you know, how can we attract the brightest minds, the guys that finished or not? I don't know, the top schools into the industry.
Speaker 3:I think me, I think the answer is similar for both actually, which is, and to the point around, I do think it's e commerce is sexy. I tend to agree somewhat. I mean, I'm a bit biased. I've been in logistics for 32 years. Um, but, um, I tend to agree that a sort of, some of these sort of more traditional logistics elements of perhaps not as sexy as some other business units, but I think ecommerce is really sexy, you know, so, um, you know, I get to wear jeans, I'd have to wear a suit. I said when I got to Germany, so I, so we get to wear normal clothes. We have a younger people, much younger than me. Um, so I think actually, I think the one good thing is that most of the younger population that's coming through and looking for jobs, I think they see the ecommerce sector, so ecommerce sector, um, as pretty exciting and yeah. Therefore by default, and I can only tell you from my experience, by default we get, or I get, you know, huge number of applications from, you know, young people that just qualified out of universities or younger people in the sort of starting out their careers, who I think are the right type of people that we want to attract into this, into this sector. So that's where a little bit sort of a byproduct of the fact that we call Dhl comments in there from the story to Econ. So I spent, I'd take some time and spend time to explain that we're still the logistics arm of ECOMMERCE, not, we're not actually doing a selling and building marketplaces and so on and so forth, but, but, um, I think it's, I think it's so therefore I think it's a bit more exciting and perhaps some of the other bs, but that I'm, I'm biased. Um, so that's number one. Number two, as I said earlier on, it is really quite challenging. I'm finding, especially when we go into a new market and, and we're selling, selling an organization. So, you know, when, when, when we went into Vietnam, we were really super lucky to hire, you know, a great country manager and he in turn has hired a really great team. But I know it hasn't been easy. And for the reasons I mentioned earlier on, because we kind of, we want people with the attitude and the, and the characteristics of startup, um, uh, the energy that drive the agility. Um, the laissez faire approach to what I wear to work or whatever else. So we want, we want the characteristics of a startup, but you're coming to work for DHL, which is, you know, top 10 employer in a world. And we have all the bureaucracies and layers and governance that you would expect for a very large organization. So it's sort of find is it's quite challenging to find the right person that fits both, that sort of start up, uh, agility sort of characteristic versus, you know, working in an operating in a very large organization. So that's been quite challenging. And then as I mentioned earlier, if we're looking for a particular functional roles, there's not a lot of people out there who've got years of experience in ecommerce. So, you know, the, the swimming pool of talent is quite, um, shallow. Yeah. In terms of that experience. But I have to say, and so whenever we started at market starts in the market, I always go in there with, you know, this will probably another will be another challenging time to go and find the right people. But to date, we've been really, really successful. So, you know, all of the new, we're starting up new markets, you know, virtually every other month. Um, and all of the markets where we started, um, the teams to data being been really fantastic, really great people. And, and I think, you know, for, for us, and you know, that's, that's kind of quite interesting in itself because having highly motivating great people is sort of the cornerstone of Deutsche Post Dhl. So it'd be DHL express or DHL global forwarding or digital supply chain, digital freight or digitally commerce or digital policy Europe. Um, we look for people that are going to be great and to date I have to say any comments, we've done that pretty well. So, so it, I think it is a challenge, but the end result seems to be worth it. Yeah, no, absolutely. And I mean it's, it's also, I mean, again, the challenge in itself consists of a great opportunity because I mean
Speaker 2:there's also the reality that the ecommerce
Speaker 3:being new, you don't necessarily need the traditional type of a background. I mean, you can, you can, you can also train and you can form and you can have a biplane. And then, you know, leadership development and so on and so forth. I mean, I think, um, you know, we're writing the chapter each day, you know, so there's no history here. There's no, um, yeah, there's no sort of, you know, cutting and sizing of this is how we've always done it because we haven't always done there. Yeah. We're pretty new. And so, and that's really exciting. I say you go to these countries, which are just starting out and you know, I was, I was in Malaysia fairly recently and I, and I asked the country manager, Jason Kong luck, make sure the office doesn't feel like a digital office. Make sure it feels like a startup you should have as how we want to operate. We on the culture to be very young, very lively, very agile, very nimble, test and fail tests and succeed, you know, very customer centric. So I went there and he'd, he'd built, uh, this sort of plastic grass pitch where these, I call them love swings, but there's some sort of swing that you sit in, um, and they're hysterical, you know? So, uh, whenever I go there, I sit in, it takes me a while to get out of them actually. Um, but I think, but it's really, it's really exciting because when other DHL has go, the FDA tells who'd been around for a long time, they go there and go, what on earth is going on? But that's kind of what we want to build, you know, so, so we, we have the luxury of it, as you say, of being much more towards the startup side and towards the traditional DHL.
Speaker 2:And as you said, I mean to the point also that typically in ecommerce, I mean, if we look at the age, you know, the age of the people that tend to enter the industry in the market, I mean, they tend to be young or they're not young. They're very young at heart, like yourself. Right. And, um, it's a different vibe. I mean it's a different, it's a different attitude. It's a different mentality. The very switched on very fast pace. Uh, of course. I mean that also means that not everybody can can just put up with it. I mean, not put up with it, but just a, just, it's not for everybody, but if you have the drive, I think it's a very fulfilling, it can be very fulfilling environment to be in and it's very stimulating. One might almost say sexy. Exactly. Yeah. There you go. You made it is my worst.[inaudible] um, Irene, Irene was asking, um, so she brought up the global talent shortage in supply chain, one of the major root cause for this aging workforce. Companies not taking steps to create a feed the future talent pipeline. She's from the African continent. I think it applies to other continents to most of them. I mean all of the other continents as well. Uh, I think this is more broader than just ecommerce, but it's, it's asking the question, what steps or initiatives is the industry taking in order to rectify this? And specifically what is DHL group? So it's a little
Speaker 3:broader, but no, it's great. It's great on it. And I think I, when I ran and I tried it a few emails on, or if he messaged on Linkedin, I particularly love this question because, um, it goes right, something I've very passionate about, which is diversity, you know, so, um, if you look at sort of unemployment rates around the world in the US and the UK and France, Germany, they're the lowest they've ever been for a long, long, long time. So really low, low, low unemployment, um, which means regardless of where you are for Dhl, ecommerce or anybody else for that matter, if you're, if you're employing a lot of people, which we are, um, it's, it's tough. It's challenging because you know, a lot of our sort of blue collar workers at the lower sort of pay side of life, and that's a really competitive space. So if you looked in the US just recently, um, Amazon rehiring 50,000 employees in a week, I think, if I remember rightly or, yeah, yeah, yeah. For, they're coming in for their peak periods, yet they're hiring in a sort of very, you know, not surprisingly in the same sort of Metros we're hiring. Um, so just what was already competitive is becoming more competitive. So, you know, so, so I think that's true. Wherever you look in the world. Um, if you're going to hire in Singapore, you want to hire and Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Japan, wherever you're hiring, it's more competitive today to higher than it was, you know, a few years ago. So what does that mean? It means, I think three things. One is you have to be employer choice or try to be employer of choice. So we work really, really hard as a group, not just essentially commerce to position Dh. There's a great place to work. We won lots of awards for it. Um, but that's meaningless. It's more about, you know, creating a culture where people enjoy coming to work. We want, you know, we really want people who come into our environment, whether you're in a warehouse, in the office, wherever they're working to actually quite like it. And, uh, and know it sounds like you're a pretty obvious statement to make, but you'd be surprised at how many people don't like when they work. I'm not surprised that[inaudible] you know, but, um, there are a lot of people out there who, you know, they, they, I think they, and you know the numbers probably better than I do, but you know, something like a third of the world of the world's workforce are either disengaged or on the fence, which means I'm not fully engaged. And if they're not fully engaged and not giving of their best, they're not really customer centric. They're not really focused on providing a great service. So we work really, really hard to try and move that. The third that are super excited and the third that is sort of on the fence, keep pushing them to be even more super excited and more happy. Because if you do, they'll provide an even better service. The third are completely disengaged. He probably lost them already in work out how to separate and shake hands as quickly as possible. But so, so again, Irene, to your question, you know, the, the first point is work really hard to position yourself to be in poorer choices. And I have to be honest, from a DHL ecommerce perspective, you know, until about a year ago, I'm not so sure we did that very well. I don't think we, we were positioning DHL ecommerce as a great place to come and work. If you want to come and work in the ecommerce related logistic sector, you probably want to go and work for him in the marketplaces or somewhere else. So we've worked really, really hard to sort of put digitally commerce on the map. Um, externally. So speaking in events, Cheryl spends, who heads up our marketing, spends a lot of time positioning DHL externally in the right format so that we know that we have a place, we have a space, we have a voice. And if you do that people say, oh, that's interesting. I'd like to like to come and learn more. And we see the number of applications has gone up considerably. So that's number one. Number two is when you hire somebody, when you bring somebody into the organization and make sure you love the hell out of them. I mean from that first moment they say yes or indeed think about saying yes and that first moment you interact with them, the experience better be amazing. In fact, I was talking to one of my country managers about this over the weekend that I'd seen a couple of, you know, prospective employees who wrote to me and said, hey, I haven't heard. And I said, that just doesn't, is not acceptable because you're creating a brand. You're, you're managing the brand in the marketplace. And those people that don't hear back or tell 20 other people I never heard back. So you just got to operate really correctly from moment of interest through to hiring and onboarding and all the way through their career. You have to work much harder these days to, um, keep the employees super engaged and motivated. So that's number two. And number three, I think to the point around diversity. And this one's really important for me. So, you know, as I mentioned earlier, I was in Africa for five years and when I first went there, we had something like 16% of our leadership are female. When I left it was 40% or more than 40%. Um, and everybody, so when in Africa you can't have female leaders and I said rubbish. You know, and as organic as organizations, we need to work really hard to recognize there are big populations and diverse categories that we have to be attractive to them. It's not just females, but way it's, it's diversity in general. Um, and, and again, to your point earlier on about sort of logistics, I'm not sure it's always the most attractive for all segments, but my thought around it is that you can change that. You can make it more attractive, um, for all categories and for all persons of whatever, religion, sex, race or whatever else. Um, so yeah, again, we started this journey about nine months ago around becoming much a much more diverse employee. Individually Commerce. Did DPD, DHL, Deutsche post to each has been doing it for a long time. Um, but particularly for ecommerce and I think to date the results are starting to show that we really can become an employer of choice for all categories as well. So, um, I think that's really important. Again, we're going back to wirings question around there is a shortage of talent. There is a shortage of prospective employees. Um, and if you disengage from ones, one category or one segment, that can be a big part of the population. So we want to be a very diverse employee. There's lots of benefits that come with it and does it getting different thoughts and all the rest of it. But I think just covering that one question is a really, really good reason to ensure that your, uh, an equal opportunity employer and you, you know, you really do try and create a great place for people to work of regardless of where they come from and who they are.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, absolutely. And I mean, to your point with, um, making sure that people are well taken care of or looked at all throughout the hiring process. It's almost like HR nowadays and I've had this discussion with several of my clients as well. Hr has to function as marketing as well as branding departments as well. I mean it's a very fine line where it should be together because uh, yeah, I mean this is the world we live in. Uh, people, uh, yeah, people have choices and um, people talk and people have social media and you really, I mean if you upset somebody, they take it to the social
Speaker 3:media and your brand will be a hit and it's just not something that you would want to do here. I mean, I mean, you hear it in the marketplace if you don't operate well, you hear about great companies to work for people that really, people love to work for it. Right here in Singapore, I hear certain companies mentioned more than others and I also here in Singapore, you know, companies, they wouldn't be able to work with workforce. So we don't want to be one on the right. We want to be definitely the company that people want to work for. So we work. To your point, we were very hard and still need to work harder on making sure we brand correctly externally. Yeah. Yeah. Um, good question. From Max Sullivan. He's actually asking how could we better train our staff to be outside of the box thinkers who are constantly looking to optimize our customer supply chain rather than just be a piece in the mechanism is in a wheel in the, in the chain.
:I think it's a bit about, um, making sure, well, I think it's really important to make sure you explain what part of the cog they are. Everybody yeah. From the slaughter, from the, you know, in my business, you know, the people that sort of end code packages and warehouses, um, through to delivery through to whoever. Yeah. Really making sure they understand what part in the process they play. That's number one. Number two, you know, celebrate them, celebrate the hell out of them, you know? So, um, and again, you know, traditionally I've seen certain functions getting more celebration than others and I think that's wrong. I think he really got her to celebrate everybody's contribution to the organization as best you possibly can. Um, thirdly, we have, um, a really, really fantastic training and development program, um, which in in our business years called pep expert and every single person from the CEO down to the, uh, ops agent in the warehouse go through the same program and meet myself included.
Speaker 3:So we're all on the same page. Um, and again, I think, you know, again, it's not fair for me to comment just purely on digital shows. I know lots of your listeners aren't working for big companies and some are small, but we're fairly lucky that the culture of Dh was very much a family. So, um, we don't tend to be too hierarchical in the first place. So if I go to a warehouse, I'll have lunch with careers, ground courier rides, whatever else. So, and, you know, we just, it's just the way we operate. That's the way we work. I think that's a real positive, which means that people do feel very inclusive organization there first. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and what do you see as, tell him Gibbs in the industry, in ecommerce right now? You know, what, what skills are, is the industry liking badly at the moment in ecommerce? Um, it's more like I said, I don't want, it's really that sort of ecommerce logistics experience. So you know, selling, if you're a sales person selling ecommerce logistics or express or frankly is probably fairly similar, so it's very transferable. But you know, that operating ecommerce logistics experiences, you have to learn, you have to really have done it. Um, and, uh, working, you know, particularly around I said earlier on about orchestrating routes that technology side of ecommerce operations, that's, yeah, that's probably the, the tougher part. The rest not so much is more that operate from, it's the front end piece that I think is, is, um, somewhat slimmer in terms of depth of available talent. But, um, but it's, it's changing. And again, you know, what are we doing it, but we're working really hard to create sort of universities within sort of ecommerce where w you know, today if we, if one of our country managers left, um, I hope it doesn't happen by the way, but if one of them did, we would probably have to replace externally because we don't, haven't developed our people through yet. I'm having any really been going through a year and a half, two years, but um, you know, the next sort of two or three is that our change and sort of the normal Deutsche Post, Dhl, the normal DHR ways, very much the focus on grooming and growing talent internally. So, so yeah, as a side of the many other things we're doing around the world, we were also working really, really hard on talent management and um, getting those sort of high performance through so they're ready to take over the next level. Super. And actually there was a question in terms of how do you, I mean, if you can give some details in terms of how do you develop this, usually the design, how is this different things that each of these, and I know that you have a very strong culture in a very rich history as well in terms of the other groups, but if there's an particular programs you are applying or so. So when we follow this sort of very normal DHL wages or the 70 2010, which is, I'm 70% is on the job. Um, so we really work hard to give people experience on the front line. So, uh, Cheryl, as I mentioned early on who heads up marketing is very keen for some very bizarre reason to go out and learn about sales and sales management. Um, so we're going to, dispatch are off to a country to experience being a sales manager for a period of time. And then she learns that and she'd come back and, and she stays there or whatever else. So I think I, and again, from my 33 years and Dhl, I learned the most from doing not from listening. Um, and you know, I can remember the very first budget I was given, which in those days was all paper based and I looked to the person who gave it to me and said, um, what do you want me to do this? He said, learn. So I wrote my very first budget on my own with no experience. I made loads of mistakes, but that's how you learn. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so that, that sort of culture is still very, very strongly in Dha. A lot of entrepreneurial type activities where we give people the opportunity to, to go and do new things, learn and fail or succeed. So, um, all of our projects were run by a existing Dhr. People who are sort of positioning then said, right, go and do that for six months or nine months or whatever else. So 70% on the job and then the rest we supplement that with, again, if you share how you show a lots of times, but are you Sheryl as an example? So, um, she's also doing an external digital courses right now and, uh, Cheryl's in a room with us by the way, so it doesn't, okay. So she's two. So the, the sort of 20% and 10% of formal, the 10% formal training or external training is a good example is a show was doing a digital social training externally as well. So we, we balanced that 70, 2010 70% on the job. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Fantastic. Fantastic. And I mean, yeah, we learn Bozeman and we are in. Yep. Yep. Um, and finally, I mean, kind of leeway question into our next segment is, um, you know, if somebody in their attendees, maybe somebody that's starting up in DHL congress, just a fresh off the oven, um, if they were to ask you how to become the CEO of digitally commerce in a few years, what kind of advice would you share? Well, they may not need to wait a few years as the first probably advise I give them. I think, you know, I'm, I'm often asked, what advice would you give younger, younger, DHL and mind? My advice is always very constant, which is it's all about attitude. I really believe that. I really am. I think, again, DHL, DHL is not a proxy for every company or every industry, but certainly in Dhl we care far more about someone's attitude than necessarily their educational experience or what college they went to or what university degree they got. We really care about how they apply themselves in a workplace. And, um, you know, so most of when we, when we're having talent discussions with, we talk a lot about EQ. Um, of course we talk about IQ as well, but we talk a lot about[inaudible], their ability to learn, their ability to take risks, their ability to create trusting environments, their ability to deliver results. So we focus a lot on their sort of leadership attributes or behaviors as opposed to necessarily, you know, the quantifiable hard facts about what school they went to wherever else. So my advice to a younger person, if they want to be a CEO of ecommerce is first of all, think twice. And secondly, secondly, you have to push me out the way. And thirdly, and thirdly. Yeah, go for it. It's all about attitude. Just really give it a 100% harder foot on the accelerator as hard as you can go as fast as you can go. And, uh, yeah, I'm sure you'll be great. Yeah, super. So, but so finally the, our third segment, which is let's say personal habits for success. Um, there was a good question from, from Odessa. He was asking, you know, what does the first two hours of your day look like before you get to work if you follow any morning routines? Yeah, I do. So, uh, I think I replied at a time and a, I just have to be careful. My wife doesn't read it, but, um, um, you know, I travel a lot, uh, an awful lot. Um, some would say a crazy amount, but I do travel an awful lot. So if I'm at home and I'll, I'll answer the question. Assuming I'm at home, if I'm at home, I really, really try to use the first hour of my day to spend some time with the family, with the kids before they go to school or whatever they're doing. So this morning I sat and had breakfast with my son, which was and competing with my daughter who's trying to watch our IPAD and I'll try and have a conversation. So, so, um, it's a very modern world. We live in these days and my children are quite young. They're eight and 10, but, um, uh, so I really try and spend a bit of time with the family, whether it be with my wife or with the kids who walking the dog. So whatever we're doing, but we try and try and get some time with the family. Then as I think I mentioned on my reply, the time I read incessantly, I love reading. And so again, normally my, the best time for me to read, not emails, but read external stuff is sort of first anymore so linkedin, Twitter, even a bit of Facebook, and catch what's going on around the world, my friends around the world. So, uh, I use that sort of first on their half an hour, an hour, um, to have a quick scan three, what's going on on the planet, um, outside of my world. Uh, then if I'm here and I know physical appearance would suggest otherwise, uh, if I'm in Singapore, I go to the gym, um, and do an hour, they'll have a, have a trainer who beats the living daylights out of me. Um, but it's great. And then it comes to the office and then I crack on with his work and whatever else I'm doing. So, yeah. But yeah, so I suppose selfishly the first day or two hours is, is me with the family, be with myself or me trying to make sure I'm fit to lead and I can, I've got my head clear for the day. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, another question. What is the book that you give most to people? Um, I've given her lots and lots and lots of books. Last year, I think at the end of last year I gave out a Pecan Savi commerce delivery, which was, uh, John John, Jonathan Reeve wrote, he's an Australian author who wrote a very good book, uh, on, so very short simple or console or some of the challenges and opportunities in ecommerce delivery. So I gave that to every one of our managers, um, in case they didn't know. Um, but uh, probably my favorite one is probably a, is a good to great. I think good to gray is one of the best books I've ever read. And I, again, I love reading, but I think good to great is, is a particularly excellent book. And I made this point to a lot of employees. There are a lot of good companies out there, a lot of good employees, but there are few great that the margins between good and great are so small. It's untrue if people realize that. And I have 90 people working here in the office here. If you said to me, Charles, tell me about some of your employees, although I have 90 the ones I you about are the ones that stand out in the great category, which are two, three or four people. Yeah. And the shameful part of that is that could be another 20 or 30 shameful for me, but also shameful for them. They're probably another 20 or 30 people. They just made a minimal effort in trying to get more recognition, more visibility to what they're doing would be in that same category. So, you know, I, and I, I think it's true in sport. I think it's true in business, I think is, I tell my son this all the time. My son is eight and um, he's a lovely little man. He's always in trouble. But the good news is when I go to his school, every teacher knows him. Every teacher, not necessarily a good way better than every teacher knows him. So if you went to that school and said in his age, Group Eight, tell me about some of the kids I get. I guarantee you his name with carp, Henry Brewer, by the way, in case anybody that knows him, but I'm his name, his name would come up because he does, he does something to distinguish himself from others, whether it be good or bad, he does something to distinguish himself from others. And I think, you know, the biggest lesson I think most companies, most most people, most organizations, most employees, my biggest advice to anyone is, you know, find out those two, three, four, five things that movie from good to great. And if you do that, you know, I think success follows. So yeah, it's, it's, it's an excellent point. And I mean,
Speaker 4:I have to share this story because we were working with a client, which I will not name. And um, I was, I was talking to their global head of HR, which is a fantastic lady and she, she was sharing, she has a very progressive mindset. She's all over linkedin and she's doing a lot of branding. And so she should actually, and then she explained to me like, look, rather, I'm struggling, really struggling and goes, obviously I'm also quite active on Linkedin and I'm struggling to convince my CEO's to go on Linkedin and take to linkedin and you know, just post stuff there. And I'm like, you know why? You know, why is that right? And she says like, look, I mean historically the company has been built on a value of being humble and they just, you know, understand that being humble, you don't go and, you know, go and broadcast yourself. And I said, but yeah, but you can be humbly broadcast themselves, right? I mean, it's not necessarily show and, and it's not boasting or bragging or chalets if doing the right things they in, in, when I was growing up, when I was growing up as a kid, I remember people saying things like, Oh, you know, he's Brown nosing or she's Brown nosing. And that phrase, Brown nosing, I think is the worst of the worst statements or worst words I ever heard because it's not brown nosing is about Korea management. Yeah. And it's so important. And it doesn't as you, to your point, it's not about bragging or boasting or what, or I tell my son as well. But um, it's about being noticed. It's about telling the world you exist. It's about telling the employer you exist. It's about telling the school you exist, you know? Um, cause I, I just humans, humans, they just don't notice you. And it's, it's, I mean we are in Asia, I've been in Asia for 10 years. You've been in it a fair amount of time. I, and then, and basically, I mean the fundamentally I get Asian culture is the sound of the empty vessel. You know, do not, you know, do not brag, but it's, it's, we live fundamentally in a world where people want to be connected to you. You need to stand for something. Everybody stands for something, right? It's not bragging, it's just broadcasting. Who are you? Right. And then it's, it's important in the workplace. It's important. Personally, it's important as you know, whatever employee you stand for, you need to represent your presenters of brand as well. You as the CEO of Dhl ecommerce, you are the brand. You know, people that follow you in[inaudible] I think in life, you know, and again, I, I'll end the sentence or the question on the same point, which is, you know, my wife sometimes gets very disturbed by, by a solid design and text. My daughter's everybody, she's much more studious and much more quiet and I drills aren't, if you just focus on her, on her doing her work and she's, she's a very bright young lady and a young girl and uh, she's a princess. She can do no wrong, but my son is the opposite, you know, so, um, my wife sometimes gets very, very wide and I always tell my wife, you need worry about Henry. And I said, why? She said, why? I said, because he's worked out the importance of being noticed and that's good. Yeah, that's a good thing. We should celebrate it. And uh, and so I do, we celebrate and we tell him he should be humbled, but we celebrate his differences. Yeah. Perfect. Another question, interesting question. What is something that you believe in that other people think it's insane?
Speaker 3:Um, I don't know if other people think is insane. I've always believed in not forgetting who you are and where you've come from. So, um, you know, I started my life in Dhl as a customer service agent. I was a courier for three years. One of the best jobs on the planet isn't to read and know what you, you, you say hello in the morning to your Boston and you don't see them until 6:00 PM in the evening. What a great job. Um, so I come from very humble beginnings. Um, and um, you know, my father, if he was still around, but we're probably telling you he was particularly worried about me. I think he probably feels a bit a bit, he would have felt a bit about like about me, about how I feel when my wife feels about my son and not sure that all is good. Um, but I come from very humble beginnings, but, but to the point, you know, I, I remember where I came from. I remember where I was. I remember how I like to be spoken to. I remember how I like to be treated. I remember how I didn't like to be spoken to, I remember how I didn't like to be treated. Um, and so when I, you know, and I, today I have individually commerce, we have 25,000 odd employees, 24,000, 700 of them are fairly junior people trying to enjoy life, go home at night and feed their families or develop a family or whatever else it may be. And, and so as I said earlier on, we want people to come to work and enjoy it and like it. And so when they meet me, it better be a positive experience. You know, it, you know, I talk a lot about being the chief energy officer. Um, so some, some, some of the 25,000 people, I may only have met ever once and for 10 seconds or 20 seconds or 30 seconds, so that 10 20 or 30 seconds better be a pretty good 10, 20 or 30 seconds. So, so I personally believe that when I go to a market, when I go to a country or come to the office, I work hard to engage at every level. And I know that some others feel potentially feel that's too close in that levels, know those levels, which I don't agree with it. So I think so something I firmly believe in, whether the other people think it's mad and I think you should, um, stay true to who you are, remember where you came from and make sure you make every possible interaction with every person that you meet as enjoyable as it possibly can be.
Speaker 4:Super Great Answer. You definitely give that impression. And I've known you for not that long, but I know for a bit then I think, yeah.[inaudible] social media. Yes. We need to put it on the table, right? On social media. You're very active on linkedin. Probably the most, one of the most active CEO's that I have in my network on social media. And it's, it's, it's uh, it's really something I am passionate about personally and I, it's, I'm, I was sharing, I was, I'm mind boggled of how little it seems that people get the impact and influence and power of social media to this day. So you're an active user influencer, linkedin power profile, which is great. Congratulations. Thank you.
Speaker 3:Can you share a little bit more in terms of how does it help you? How does it help your brain? How does it help DHL ECOMMERCE? Because maybe more people will, yeah, I've always believed in it. Um, you know, so I discovered social media, whereas an Africa, so you had a billion people in Africa and most people don't. If I write an article in a paper in South Africa, it's not gonna reach Garner or wherever else. And so, so that, that was sort of, I don't think it's true. You know, where, where I operated. I am based here, but we have, we cover, you know, the world is a pretty big place. Um, so I recognize that social media is a great way to connect with employees and connect with your customers and potential employees and potential customers and stakeholders, um, fairly effectively and very quickly. Yeah. So I learned that sort of four, five, six years ago, um, as a, as a fantastic tool to do that. So that was number one. Number two, um, like I said earlier on, you know, if you want to be employer choice investor a choice, um, um, provide rejoice. So those are sort of three guiding principles and, and of who we want to be as an organization. Um, if want to do those three things, you have to connect, um, with them, you know, so I get huge amounts of feedback from employees and customers through digital channels. So, uh, so that's, so I use it is a great medium for me to listen, engage here, take critique and take praise. Occasionally more critiqued them praise on us. But, um, it's a great way to sort of really connecting with your sort of stakeholders very, very fast and very, very effectively. And a third thing is I think it's just, you know, again, you know, I'm not going to go back to school. I'm a bit late in my life. I'm 52 years now, although I did think of any other day, um, I'm probably not gonna go back to school and learn something new, but you can learn so much by what's written and posted on social channels. Um, so, uh, so yeah, like I said, I don't want to spend, you know, half an hour, an hour, a day reading and learning. And normally they're quite quick reads, you know, that they're not sort of 10 day reads, you know, sort of 10 seconds or half an hour or whatever maybe. So, um, you can learn an awful lot was going on in your sector or in related sectors or the world by going, going through social. So, so yeah, so I'm a real firm believer. I've, we were talking about it the other day. Um, it's a great way for us to attract talent is a great way for us to recruit. I apologies in advance. I do a lot of searching for talent through Linkedin as an example. Um, so we use linkedin a lot to sort of research people, research, prospective employees, research perspective customers, um, engage with existing customers. So I think it's just a, it's just somebody that people do business today. You know, I, again, I like I put him, you know, I did the article I think couple of days ago said, if you're not sort of, you know, to other Cxos, if you're not on it, you know, what are you doing? I mean it's just crazy. I mean it's, it's the place where your customers are especially, you know, in the commerce sector. I think more so than it was because our population are, our consumer base is pretty young and you know, my wife is not ringing a call center ever. She's going on Twitter and saying this is great or this rubbish. So we do a lot of that Matt, managing and maintaining our customer base through, through those sort of things here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And um, and it's not, I mean, I even, you know, coming from search executive search, I see that as a complimentary, I don't see it as I'm in fundamentally, I don't see it as a threat. It's a great talent. It's a great talent base. I'm, we're going to start selling solutions to companies who employ running for social selling for, I think it's, it's again, it's threat and opportunity, right? Depends on how you play,
Speaker 3:what for you and for us more of an opportunity to throw. Yeah. Yeah. If you use it in the right way, I think it's fantastic. It's fantastic. Again, it's like, it's a bit like the ecommerce discussion we had earlier on about threatened opportunity. That train has left the station so far better to be on it and work out how to use it to your advantage or not. Um, yeah. So yeah,
Speaker 2:I usually, it doesn't mean lay enabler. I mean technologies, you know, you cannot fight it. Knowledge. I had a very interesting discussion with somebody or the Economic Development Board in Singapore and I mean he was saying and he was arguing but kids that soon enough, and I think it's going to happen soon enough. People are going to start fighting against technology because they will see technology as taking their jobs. And it's again, depends how do you play it, right? Because the technology in the core fundamentals of it is an enabler. Should not be an will, not I think be, uh, you know, taking away all our jobs. Right. But you need to be in a constant time frame and mindset of constant learning, adapt, use the channel that works to connect to your audience, to connect to your clients, to connect to your,
Speaker 3:I, I, I'm not saying I tell you, I totally agree. I mean, I think anybody who thinks they can fight technology I think is completely missing. The point is he, again, same as e commerce discussion, they've train has left the station. So it's about working at how to play with it and be part of it and use it as a success tool rather than, again, you can't stop it. It happened. I do, however think and I, and again, I think this is relatively topic, I think, I think, and you know, go back to question about I am on social media. I am, and I want it a lot. Um, but you gotta be very careful. It doesn't destroy your, your other values or other life systems, you know, so I think, you know, some, sometimes I practice mindfulness and um, there are moments where I really have to catch myself and say, you know what, stop. Because, yeah. You know, I just recently I was four days in a, in Benton with a family this last weekend having a break. And I make a very conscious decision that for the moment we leave the room. So from eight o'clock in the morning until 6:00 PM at night, when we come back, don't take my phone to my laptop, don't take anything. It's just, that's family time. And we are like, I only allocate in my head sort of half an hour or so during my off time to catch up with work or linkedin or whatever else. It may be a cause. It can become quite consuming. I see. I see that in families. I see my children, um, you know, who are consumed with their iPads. Um, uh, I see it in myself. I, so I think it's, it's like everything is about getting the right balance, you know? And I'm not too much. This is not so good on too little is definitely operated and none at all is definitely mistakes. Social is definitely like the right place to be from OCC.
Speaker 4:Yeah. Oh, I've had my first year. My work also has given me a pretty hard time with, yeah. Yeah. I'm trying to balance it off. You're perfectly, perfectly right. The, I mean, it's a fine, it's a fine balance. It's a fine balance, but such is life in general. Um, and we're just about the close to an end. Just a couple more questions. Um, what has been the biggest let down in your career so far? And let's, you know, we learn a lot also from where we fail.
Speaker 3:Um, all I went, I was in the u s when, um, I think probably two things. I was in a u s when, uh, when we, we just recently bought a domestic company and, uh, over two years try to make it succeed and it didn't, and we had to eventually close it down. This was about eight years ago now. And that was hugely and personally painful, a painful, because I wanted it to succeed. And I think he could have succeeded if we'd gone about it the right way, but personally painful cause we let a lot of people down as a lay off a lot of people. So it was one of the hardest periods of my life in dear child without a doubt. So I, but to your point, uh, the upside of the, and there's limited upside, but the upside is I learned an awful lot. I learned an awful lot how not to do things going forward. So, um, in terms of executing acquisitions or whatever else, but it was a really unpleasant experience and you know, I still to this day feel very sad about what we went through. So that would be one. And then secondly, and a much happier note, my probably biggest personal dissatisfaction as I still haven't lost 20 kilos.
Speaker 4:I'm still trying to lose 20. Yes, I've got down to about 10 or 15, but I haven't got down to the 20, so I still have at least another 15 kilos to go. And it drives me mental, that, um, it drives me to distraction that I, that I, um, that I struggled to get those other kilos off. So maybe we don't need to. Maybe 19 says I'm going to happen. Yeah. You come from England though, you know, you've said it in an arsenal fan. Are you a rugby fan? Is ma'am, yeah, rockets and advantage. It was, it was an advantage when I played rugby. My father was a rugby player. He is not even to this limited either. So it helps him rugby, rugby. Um, what kind of industry events do you find useful? I mean, we were his roommate. Is there any industry events that you would recommend?
Speaker 3:There's lots actually. So, um, I mentioned earlier on that one of the things we, you know, share on, I had decided when we first got together about a year ago was that I'm digitally commerce didn't have a particularly strong position in the marketplace around, you know, what we were doing, you know, talk to all the stakeholders that we've talked about endlessly. So, so, um, you know, we made a decision that we're going to speak at a lot more events and you know, you can't really delegate that activity that has to be the CEO. So it, it causes a bit of travel congestion here and there. Um, but, um, I think there's some really fantastic events around Asia, some really fantastic events in Europe and some really fantastic events in the US. The trick is choosing the right ones and the ones that really fit with what you're trying to achieve. Um, so, um, so that's been hugely successful. Um, outside of that we, you know, again, not too many I think. I mean, we get involved as an organization, DHL sponsors a lot of activities that we sponsored, Manchester United Rather, sadly.
Speaker 4:Um, from my perspective[inaudible] that causes some consternation and we sponsored by in Munich who were here last week.[inaudible] name is there. That's not so bad. And they're, they're a great club actually. So I enjoy, although they did ask me, how do you deal with sort of the quandary of being an all star fan and having to wear a by Munich shots? I can get past it. But, um, so we sponsored, that
Speaker 3:was the f one and we sponsor formula e, which is a sort of new electronic formula racing, which is fantastic. Really supports and supplements. I'll drive to become a zero emissions organization. Um, so I'm really, we're really proud of that is really taking off at like no one's business. So we sponsor a lot of activities so we get to go to and attend a lot of those events, which we get to take a lot of our customers, which is fantastic. So, um, it's nice to spend a bit of time with them, either our employees or customers in a more social settings. Yeah, that's quite nice. I, other than that, I don't really have time for many other things, so, uh, that's pretty bad. It, I think his name. Yeah.
Speaker 4:What are you using, so you mentioned you take your information on Linkedin, out of Twitter, I using any apps, any other sort of, you know, it's, you know, pieces of a useful technology that you use to stay, not as stuff, not really
Speaker 3:10 and Twitter. Uh, primarily fel. I mean, there's a few other ones around like, um, um, uh, we have an APP which is a DHL application, which Courtney Yammer, uh, which I shouldn't be available. Is that possible? It's why[inaudible] uh, but we use that to set up groups across Dhl to talk to as many people as we possibly can. Yeah. Sometimes we do a lot of that. So that's, and that's quite good actually because, um, and again, going back to the point about sort of getting, you know, really fast information. So, um, yeah, we use that quite a lot, uh, for ecommerce to sort of push out information to our customers also to our employees. Um, but also to listen to their feedback. So, um, know, just recently, for example, in the U S I was doing, I wanted to find out some information around how well one of our products was going. So I asked our employees in the u s and within seconds I had lots and lots of feedback about what was good, what was bad. And again, to the point early on about what do I do that others may think is mad. Some people may think that's crazy, but my personal opinion is if you really want to know how something is going, don't ask the manager as the courier or asked the APP's Asian or ask the warehouse person, they will tell you the truth about how something's going going. So, uh, so we use, I use a lot of those sort of platforms to get very fast research. Yeah. I wish I could do the same for customers. I have to work out how I can do the same for customers. But um, um, but certainly certainly from an employee perspective we use that quite a bit. Yeah. Super. Final question. If you could go back and give you a 21 year old self of valuable piece of advice, what would you say don't eat that Burger now. I'd probably, I've been asked this a couple of times before. Actually. I don't know. Is there really a tough one? I probably would say as nothing in my life, I would change. There's nothing in my life I would change. I love, I've loved all 33 years. I've been at 100 and or with the HR, I've been 110 52 years in life, but 33 years of data. I've been no 110 countries in one way working or visiting, but 110 countries. I've met football styles, rugby I've, I mean I've had an amazing life, amazing opportunities, so there's nothing I would change. I would probably tell my 20 year old version. Go harder, go faster and stand out even more. Yeah, I'm super, yeah. Journals, Gray Sherrington sorts of the time. You're welcome. Thank you very much for making the time to share with us and pleasure and get your son. Yeah. Cheers. Cheers.
Speaker 1:Thank you all for listening to our podcast. If you liked what you heard, be sure to follow us on[inaudible] dot com slash podcast for all the show notes and links and extra tips covered in the interview. Also make sure you subscribe to our email list at the bottom of the page to get the news in the nick of time. I am most active on Linkedin, so do feel free to follow me to stay tuned for our latest podcasts and articles and make sure not to miss our next episode. We're talking with somebody who is similar to a Jason Bourne of logistics, worked across several continents, served for the US Senate and g 20 set up successful logistic businesses in China, India, Southeast Asia, and USC is a fervent speaker and contributor on the latest topics in supply chain and he is probably one of the most interesting logisticians we have in our network. All Bradley look forward to gray sharing and we shall keep you posted. Stadium.