INTERVIEW OF THE MONTH
INTERVIEW WITH Mr. Karthi Baskar, Deputy Managing Director,
KWE Logistics
You have been the Deputy Managing Director of KWE in India with a very impressive track record of growth of 40% YOY for the past 9 years. What has been your mantra for success?
We began our journey in India way back in 1997.Since then we are having a very exciting period serving our customers and expanding our business. Our approach has been to provide customers with a ‘one stop shop’ where they could address all their logistics needs. Our endeavour is to serve more than what our customer expects. This approach has helped us to remain focussed and to excel in our ability to serve customer despite business downturns and competition.
Our mantra to success is driven by our People, Process and technology.
Our People are driven with passion to serve customers and they always stay grounded despite the success they achieve. That’s the culture we imbibe.
Our Processes are re-engineered to meet and excel current and future business requirements. Our best practices redefine the industry’s paradigm, locally, regionally and globally.
Technology is a major driver for this change and we use the best technology partners, who understand our customer needs and use the right technologies to achieve them.
How are the customers’ requirements changing over time and what are the prime challenges faced by the logistics industry to optimise costs and increase revenue?
There are multiple changes that are redefining the customer requirements. Last year we implemented the GST and we worked with our customers to support them in their journey.
Secondly, businesses are evolving due to technological disruptions. Organisations are in a constant quest to redefine their business models. We work closely with the customer, constantly upgrading our infrastructure and service level to support their business models and help them get visibility and cost advantage.
Thirdly, Customers are looking at visibility and better customer experience. Customer experience cannot be scalable without harnessing technology whereby making it imperative. Emerging technologies like Chatbot and RPA which are AI enabled helps to understand the customer needs proactively and accurately. In the future, we can see a more proactive customer service using predictive analysis.
How do think emerging technology has influenced the logistics industry and your views whether early adoption of emerging technology could be a competitive advantage?
Technology will play a major part in redefine logistics industry. Primarily, industry is going through up gradation in “Industry 4.0” for digitization of supply chain functions.
New technology such as Artificial intelligence, Internet of things, big data analytics, block chain – distributed ledger technology, Transport machine technology development will play major role in redefining the Logistic Industry.
Information technology tool is mandatory in the development of logistics industry. Early adoption of these technological tools will help companies grow faster, have stronger customer retention, good and safe control of the entire supply chain activities.
With digital transformation happening at your customer’s organisation and many focusing on customer engagement and communication, what are the sort of pressures large service providers like yourself facing to be ahead on the game and how are they coping with adoption of new technologies like chatbots and RPA?
We are in the early stages of a technology revolution that will reframe the relationship between human and machine and between the customer and us. But AI, blockchain, RPA, robotics, IoT, and quantum computing are not simply about technology; they are about the timing and nature of strategic choices you make. When do you start experimenting? How does this impact partnerships, or talent acquisition? How do you co-create with customers to spark innovation and manage risk? Strategic and operational decisions are driven as to how, and how fast, to capitalize on emerging technologies.
Blockchain is all the rage for logistics industry, promising to advance and, in some cases, disrupt the transactional bedrock underpinning the economy. This is notable in a future where business platforms and complex ecosystems take a larger role in fulfilling vast and varied customer demands.
Digital is still a challenge for the sector There is no other industry where so many industry experts ascribe a high importance to data and analytics in the next five years than transportation and logistics – 90% in T&L compared to an average of 83%. The sector has never had access to more data. There are vast opportunities here to improve performance and serve customers better, and LSPs who are part of a digitally integrated value chain can benefit from significantly improved forecasting to scale capacity up or down and plan routes. Adding machine learning and artificial intelligence techniques to data analytics can deliver truly dynamic routing.
Robotics process automation (RPA) represents an important step forward in digital outsourcing, enabling machines to tackle mundane and repetitive tasks and free up human capital for more complex and creative work. Despite RPA’s progress, questions remain around how far and how fast RPA will advance and what kind of opportunities will become available to compete or operate differently and better.
How do you think enterprises can leverage emerging technologies to innovate and scale?
We believe that the traditional way of doing business will be a passé. Enterprises should have a very clear digital strategy within their businesses and with their business partners to see a more seamless integration.
As a logistic business provider, we collaborate our digital plans with our customers whereby innovating business models and building scalability in their business.
We believe that scalability in the logistics industry will depend on 5 areas namely Digitalization, Machine driven process changes, Shift in international trade, Software driven process changes, changes in market domestic commerce.
All areas of improvement need emerging technology to scale up and deliver growth.