‘I don’t believe in the new normal’: DHL Express boss John Pearson says pandemic was boon for the logistics sector
John Pearson, CEO of DHL Express, talks about how the pandemic came as a boost to the logistics business, why his company focusses on people, and the way ahead for his company While emphasising that the challenges thrown up by the Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent geopolitical developments have boosted the logistics business, John Pearson, CEO of international logistics service provider DHL Express, sees a continued focus on digitalisation, sustainability, globalisation and e-commerce being critical to the company’s future market strategy. In an exclusive interaction with Business Today’s Manish Pant, the 60-year-old DHL veteran says that the company would maintain its laser-sharp focus on people—be it employees or customers—to drive its quality of services and growth in India and the world. Edited excerpts: Q: What’s the new normal in this VUCA world? A: I don’t believe in the [term] ‘new normal’. The world has changed a lot in terms of working from home and things like that. But when we talk about logistics and supply chain, things haven’t changed much. Like, people now look at the Icelandic ash cloud crisis of 2010 as a weather thing. [But] it was a major logistical catastrophe, where no aircraft, including DHL, was flying over Europe for those 30-40 days. Everyone said they were going to change their supply chains… that they were going to bring them closer to where consumption was happening through nearshoring and reshoring. What happened? Nothing! When we think about Covid-19 and its impact on supply chains—which has been a hot topic of discussion—supply chain and logistics companies did extremely well during the pandemic. Not only with all the normal things that people move, but also with vaccines. Some people claimed that logistics companies would struggle to deliver vaccines. However, logistics companies, including our competitors and freight forwarders, did a fantastic job of delivering all the vaccines, without any spoilage, to where they should be consumed. Thus, the pandemic was an extraordinary time for logistics companies to be acknowledged a little bit more for what they do. SPOTLIGHT ‘Drinking to get a good night’s sleep’: What Shankar Mishra, the man who peed on woman, told co-passenger ‘Board should fire Sundar Pichai’: Google layoffs trigger anger, sorrow, disbelief Amul hikes milk prices by Rs 3/litre; check latest rates here Sovereign Gold Bond (SGB) Scheme: Govt launches Series IV 2022-23, subscription open till March 10 High dividend-paying stocks: Religare Broking picks these 10 PSU shares for solid returns Missed opportunity? Adani group shares rally up to 95% from their 52-week low levels Adani Group firefights Hindenburg-inflicted damage: Roadshows in London, Dubai, US from today Q: How have the global supply chains been impacted? A: Some organisations are thinking about supply chain resilience going forward. What does that mean? That means China-plus one. [They are] thinking about whether they should set up a manufacturing base in Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia or India. One of the outputs of global trade in the DHL Trade Growth Atlas [an annual report on global trade growth trends and prospects] was that those countries are benefitting from some of the reshoring activity to create supply chain resilience. Don’t forget that for more than 24 months, different Chinese cities were in some state of lockdown. So that is a little bit of the new normal. By and large, the only other thing I would comment on is that we have redoubled our efforts in terms of our global aviation strategy to make sure we have more aircraft and more optionality to make sure that our partners are just as flexible as we have always imagined them to be. We added over 100 aircraft in the last two years. And that was to make sure that we could supply transportation to our customers because transit time is what they require from us. And without transportation, there is no transit time and without transit time, there is no quality. Q: Have the Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent geopolitical events led you to reorganise operations? A: I don’t think we have reorganised operations. We always need to be very tuned into the challenges. Being a truly global organisation, we [quickly] responded when the Russia-Ukraine crisis happened. We responded to the energy crisis by buying more warm clothing for the people that would typically use central heating in offices in case of energy restrictions. We closely watch the trends and react to them. Being a global company with people in 220 countries, we adapt to any news coming our way. But, as I […]
