How to Align Technology, Business Needs, and People in Logistics
Editor’s note: This article was contributed by Magaya partner Natalia Gerasina, founder and CEO of Gerasina, Ltd.
Balancing the demands of digital transformation, workplace well-being, and sustainable growth is no small feat. Business leaders often find themselves pulled between competing priorities—juggling people, technology, and processes—while striving to stay ahead of the competition. But achieving harmony isn’t just a lofty goal; it’s entirely within reach, with the right strategy and execution. This article unpacks common challenges in these areas and offers actionable strategies to drive success for your business and the logistics industry as a whole.
Ready to digitize and modernize your freight forwarding operations?
See how Magaya can help.
Complex Industry Pains Require a Holistic Approach
A company, much like a human being, exhibits symptoms when something isn’t right. Operational inefficiencies, financial underperformance, and unhealthy work cultures often signal deeper issues. Addressing these symptoms alone may provide temporary relief, but ensuring long-term health requires uncovering and resolving root causes.
A holistic approach helps address these underlying challenges while simultaneously creating a foundation for sustained performance. Let’s examine common “symptoms” logistics service providers face on their digital journey and explore strategies to tackle them systematically.
Technology
Pain Point 1: Overwhelming Promises from Startups
The logistics technology market is crowded with startups claiming to reduce costs, automate inefficiencies, and revolutionize operations. While many of these companies offer valuable innovations, not all solutions are equally effective.
How to Evaluate Service Providers:
- Engage independent logtech consultants for cost-effective assessments.
- Attend industry events to interact with solution providers and their customers.
- Leverage independent online resources to research supply chain technology.
Pain Point 2: Legacy Platforms
Legacy systems, though reliable for their original purpose, often pose integration challenges in a modernized logistics environment, especially for organizations without a mature IT structure.
How to Balance Modern and Legacy Systems:
- Hire or contract with an enterprise architect to streamline processes and reduce costs.
- Collaborate with reliable system integration providers to address compatibility issues. If integrations are built in-house, engage consultants specializing in system integration and migration.
- Avoid defaulting to expensive, popular solutions—scalable systems from smaller, reliable providers may offer better value.
Pain Point 3: Homegrown vs. Commercially Available Software
Choosing between tailored, in-house systems and standardized solutions is a recurring dilemma for logistics companies.
Why Commercial Software Solutions Work:
- They take responsibility for system architecture and updates.
- Software improvements are continuous and independent of your company’s internal budget.
- Their partner ecosystems facilitate seamless and efficient integrations.
Business Processes
Pain Point 1: Lack of Standards
From management to warehousing, every function contributes to overall performance. Global enterprises must adhere to specific standards, but small companies often underestimate the long-term benefits of standardization, leading to inefficiencies.
How to Standardize Business Processes:
- Adopt standards early to ensure smoother transitions during growth.
- Maintain clear documentation to avoid miscommunication.
- Focus on process frameworks that improve workflows without adding unnecessary complexity.
Pain Point 2: Low Transparency
Siloed structures and poor inter-departmental communication hinder transparency, creating inefficiencies.
How to Foster a Transparent Workplace Culture:
- Form cross-functional working groups with clear objectives. For instance, customer service feedback can reveal systemic issues IT might otherwise miss.
- Regularly share performance metrics and goals company-wide. Transparency in data fosters accountability and aligns teams toward shared objectives.
- Encourage open dialogue through tools like anonymous surveys or regular town halls. This allows employees to voice concerns and share ideas without fear of judgment.
Pain Point 3: Misalignment Between Strategy and Execution
Non-centralized organizations often lose sight of strategic goals while focusing on day-to-day tasks.
How to Bridge the Gap Between Strategy and Execution:
- Use the Objectives and Key Results (OKR) methodology to align objectives across all levels, ensuring individual tasks contribute to broader strategic goals.
- Foster cross-country cooperation to identify and share best practices.
- Strengthen cross-functional collaboration to align departmental goals.
People
Pain Point 1: Navigating Workplace Culture Changes
Remote work, well-being initiatives, and cultural shifts can create tension between productivity and community-building.
How to Encourage Positive Cultural Change:
- Train managers to understand workplace psychology and raise awareness of neurodiversity to foster inclusivity.
- Partner with change management and communication consultants to navigate strategic changes effectively.
Pain Point 2: Right People in the Wrong Roles
Placing both top performers and underperformers in unsuitable roles often results in poor performance and high turnover.
How to Match the Right People With the Right Roles:
- Enable role transitions through HR and management, aligning employees’ ambitions with organizational goals.
Pain Point 3: Leadership Maturity
The logistics industry requires leaders capable of navigating complexity and inspiring teams. Unfortunately, mature leadership is often lacking.
How to Encourage and Grow Mature Leadership:
- Promote highly qualified specialists to process leadership roles.
- For people leadership, prioritize empathetic, motivational leaders, even if this means hiring externally.
Aligning Business Needs, People, and Technology
The challenges outlined above highlight only a fraction of the issues logistics companies face. While addressing each pain point individually is possible, doing so can feel overwhelming. Minimizing every business function’s symptoms does not guarantee overall organizational health. Achieving sustainable growth requires a comprehensive approach.
Logtech-focused consulting and project management agencies like Gerasina can help align business units and external stakeholders, proactively addressing pain points without straining internal resources.
The Role of Partner Ecosystems in LogTech
Digitalization in logistics is no longer optional. Aligning technology, business processes, and people with organizational strategy is essential for successful transformation. Additionally, fostering strong partner ecosystems drives collaboration, benefiting individual companies and the industry as a whole.
Magaya, with its vast partner ecosystem, exemplifies this approach. By offering comprehensive solutions for freight forwarders and shippers and leveraging a robust global partner network, Magaya creates value beyond its products. Together with partners like Gerasina, Magaya demonstrates how aligned technology, people, and processes drive growth and innovation across the industry.
Conclusion: Paving the Way for a Digital Future
Every logistics service provider plays a crucial role in shaping the future of the industry. Aligning technology, business processes, and people with strategic goals is key to building interoperable and transparent global supply chains.
Independent consultants, alongside software providers with strong ecosystems, enable companies to move beyond survival mode and thrive. Together, we can create a more integrated, efficient, and innovative logistics landscape for the future
Ready to digitize and modernize your freight forwarding operations?
See how Magaya can help.