“Open-mindedness is the foundation”

The new year is a few weeks old by now, but at the beginning let's take a quick look back: What do you remember in particular from the past year? And what were your personal highlights in 2024?

Anyone who knows me even only a little will know that for Preußen Münster to be promoted to the 2nd division of the Bundesliga was, of course, an absolute highlight! – sorry, first things first! (laughs). Looking at professional highlights, that would definitely be things that happened in connection with our clients. This past year has most certainly been very demanding. We all feel the pressure coming from the market. The things that I then consider to be special are those that arise out of these challenges. When all of us grow together, as was for example the case due the shared automation projects. And of course, whenever we are able to energise new clients for our company. That is always a highlight. OACE comes to mind, who we went live with only two weeks after having signed the contract, to name just one example. Generally speaking, we managed to attract a lot of great business and action many client projects this past year. We launched new locations for ACTION and SEPHORA in Italy; we inaugurated our new logistics centre in Bülach in Switzerland and began overseeing operations at a new warehouse in Schwelm for our long-time client, Vorwerk. 2024 had many highlights that I will remember.

In general: What were or are the biggest challenges that we are facing as a logistics provider?

A relevant share of our clients is definitely feeling the overall economic situation. It is very unfortunate that last year came with companies that recorded a distinct decline in volumes or even filed for insolvency. It is relevant that especially in times like these, we remain as close as possible to our clients and support them as best as possible in our capacity as a service provider. At the same time, we have clients who, despite the challenging times, are successful, continue to grow, and with whom we open new locations. Overall, we benefit from our robust position as a group that operates across multiple sectors, and from scaling our client’s operations flexibly. We want to continue this course in 2025.

Let's look ahead now. As a logistics service provider, our primary goal is to create real added value for our clients. How do you personally define added value? And how do we create this?

Added value is something highly customised. There are no generally applicable standards for this. Instead, every client defines this in their own way. Which is why our mission – we are obsessed with creating value for our customers – not only excites us, but also brings us great joy. The bottom line is that, ultimately, it doesn’t really matter how clients define added value for themselves. The decisive thing is, primarily, that we create it on behalf of our clients, and that clients therefore can focus on their core business. That’s what we are here for. We are a service provider. Ours is not a product that sparkles or that we display in a shopwindow. Instead, we add value for our clients by being the best possible service provider we can be. How do we do this? We listen. And then we ask the right questions to find out for every one of our clients which specific value we can add for them. There are clients for whom this is all about cost efficiency, and others where it is the possibility to scale their operations flexibly. For yet other clients, it is about digitalisation or even developing new sales channels. It is our job to identify the respective needs so as to, in the following, contribute our part to these needs being served as best as possible.

What would you say we are really good at? And where is there still room for improvement?

A big company’s COO once told to me that we had become his most important logistics partner. In his own words: “You are fast with fixing mistakes.” And that is a great strength of ours: Our thinking is always solution-minded, and we quickly find solutions for our clients’ demanding challenges. If ever something does not work to perfection – which comes with our line of business – we respond fast and pragmatically. Also, we benefit from being close to our clients. This makes it easier to go through even difficult times and tackle challenges together and with resolve.

And where is there still room for improvement?

There is always still a little more room to optimise any process. The sustained improvement and striving for operational excellence do not have a natural limit. There is no finish line. That is the underlying rationale for lean management – which is why we will never stop evolving. I currently see this frequently here within our organisation because, for example, we are using the outcome and the findings from our Customer Survey to place a strong focus on our clients’ wishes and become even better and more efficient operationally.

Speaking of which: Once again, we asked our clients for their opinion and feedback with a customer survey last year. What are the most important lessons learned from this?

Our customer satisfaction stats are high, which is the most important benchmark there is for us. And the trend continues to be positive. I am very happy about this since it tells us that we are on the right path. What I am also pleased about is that our trend with clients who one year ago were in part not that satisfied with our performance, is very positive for 2024. This impressively demonstrates how important it is to listen, and listen well; that we accept feedback and work with it – and that we enter into an exchange and build mutual trust and understanding. After all – this is yet another thrilling realisation – those clients who give us the most detailed feedback tend to be our most satisfied clients, on average. The more we know and understand our clients’ needs, the better we are in creating additional value for our clients. And that’s the reason why I am so grateful when our clients honestly mirror what is going well and what is possibly not going too well. Feedback is a great help for us and motivates us to keep improving our clients' satisfaction in 2025.

We have been working with quite a few of our clients for several decades. To you, what defines a good, successful partnership with a client?

Open-mindedness. I believe that this is the foundation. When you openly talk to one another, trust can be built. Next to operational excellence, which must always be guaranteed, we also talk a lot about the relationship level. This is about the rapport that we share with our clients. An honest, open-minded exchange is always the foundation to building a solid partnership. This is a people business and people on both sides need to be a good fit. Beyond this, we naturally need to be able to overcome the challenges that our clients have. We need to be willing to respond fast to changes of our clients. We need to remain agile and flexible to ensure that the client’s needs are always at the centre of attention at any given moment. Only then will we be the best possible partner.

Has there been a shift over the years or has the foundation for sharing success always remained the same?

What has changed enormously is the framework within which success is to be created. Today’s requirements are very different to those of the past. Everything is much faster, and planning cycles are much shorter. Moreover, we had to deal with major disruptions over the past years. Covid, the dreadful war in the Ukraine, inflation, the escalating conflict in the Middle East: every generation has its very own challenges – and the speed at which everything is happening right now is incredibly fast. However, what has not changed is that the relationship level remains the decisive factor. The relationship with our clients, our partners, our colleagues – this has remained the foundation for our success across generations. Add to this our own standards that we place on our ourselves. As a company, we want to stay in motion and keep reinventing ourselves time and again – we have been doing this by now for 152 years.

What will be decisive in the future for us to continue adding value for our clients?

Currently, we are working diligently on aligning our organisation even closer with our clients, to allow us to understand a little better what our clients and those hoping to become a client, need. We will need to respond even faster to changes and – often sudden – challenges on the client’s part than we are doing already today. Going forward, our clients will expect even greater flexibility on our part, and it is for us to know how to deal with this. Add to this the major topics that are on everyone’s mind and that worry us: digitalisation, automation, artificial intelligence and sustainability. Moreover, we wish to and must further consolidate our position as an appealing employer. For the tasks that lie ahead of us, we need a strong team – even with a labour market as tense as it is right now, we want to locate colleagues that are the best fit for us and tie them to us in the long run.

What is the role of cooperation with other businesses, such as start-ups?

A very central one. We are an organisation that is driven by partnership. Working together with our partners and suppliers is extremely important. For example, when talking automation, we do not create this by ourselves but need strong partners by our side with whom we devise, trial and market-ready solutions. This goes likewise for the entire innovation and development process where, for example, co-operating with start-ups is super important. The decisive thing is: