Coronavirus turns the world upside down, hitting the once stable foundations of world economies. However, in these circumstances, one cannot allow closed borders to become a closed approach in managing a business. Especially now, we should pay attention to actions that have been taken, calibrate the strategy well and implement such solutions that enable us a stable workflow.
Now we focus on what we consider a core responsibility and a bigger challenge in this stormy times – to keep our people safe, to maintain outstanding support to our clients and subcontractors and prepare our organization for the next cycle to come. – says Kamelia Vasileva, Commercial Manager Gopet Poland.
You can read the full interview on the Puls Biznesu website (text in Polish) or browse the English version below.
Logistics and transport in the pandemic era
Interview with Kamelia Vasileva, Commercial Manager Poland
The Polish company is part of the Gopet group, which also operates in Bulgaria, Greece, Romania and Spain. What events turned out to be a driving force enabling the development of a Polish company?
Kamelia Vasileva, Commercial Manager Poland: The 2008 economic crash re-shaped and re-arranged the global business setup. Logistics, as part of the puzzle was not an exception to experience this turbulences. I’ve started my journey in Gopet in 2006. Back in that times we had limited activities with Poland and a big potential to develop this market. That was the challenge I committed to in my first years in the company. The business between Bulgaria and Poland evolved faster than we expected opening a great possibilities to develop. Based on the experience we had already with expansion of Gopet to Romania and the competitive advantage we took the challenge to establish a new company in Poland.
Why Lodz?
Lodz was the natural, but less obvious for a foreign company place to start new activities. Back in 2009 the city still had his old-manufacturing-look with demolished and poorly maintained tenement house buildings. Nevertheless, we felt that this s city has a width perspectives for further business growth of our activities.
And we were right. Strategically located, with already very well developed road infrastructure Lodz gives us an easy access to the main business generating points in Poland. Secondly and very important competitive advantage of the city are its Universities. Gopet Poland is in constant cooperation with UŁ for many years, participating in conferences, supporting projects and leading workshops for the students. The internship programs we organize every year gives students an opportunity to experience how the logistics function and in the same time gives us as organization a possibility to grow our team with young and motivated people with hunger to learn and develop new skills in a dynamic international environment.
Who are your customers?
Our understanding for sustainable business is keeping a harmony in relations with all stakeholders and maintaining a healthy balance of their influence over the company’s financial results. When we talk about clients I should say that our group focus is to build a diversified clients’ portfolio. We cooperate with major global accounts, midsize international and local organizations as well as with small production and trade companies.
Our clients present industries such as FMCG, Retail, Fashion, Pharmaceutics and Chemical, AGD, Automotive, Wood and Timber, Paper, Agriculture, Equipment, Construction and few more. Majority of them operate actively in Poland having either logistics plants or production yards, or both here.
What can be a threat to further success and development of the company? What is your advantage?
Gopet, as a group of companies, presents a width service portfolio. We provide for our clients and partners road, sea, air and intermodal transports, and also logistics services. Thus, any company having such activities in the same markets we do can be and is in some extend our competitor. We are working in a very dynamic market environment, where a new entrepreneurs are coming and a new businesses are being established daily. Some start ambitiously and dive aggressively in the business, creating threats for all “old players” and this is valid also for the transportation and logistics segment. Gopet Poland is such an example. Back in 2009 we were a new comer and unknown brand here in Poland. Did we create a threat for part of our competitors? Yes, we did. We shook the market on destinations which were our targets and create a place for our services to develop. Nevertheless, competitors new and old are the necessary moving power for any successful business. They push us out of the comfort zone, keeping us restless and motivated to develop our services and expand the business.
The biggest advantage we always had and have are our people. We are happy to have a great team of experts working in all our five offices. More than 400 co-workers, speaking together 17 languages, creating a basket of knowledge and competences we provide to our customers and subcontractors. Geographical location of our offices is also an advantage that needs to be mentioned as well as our complex service portfolio. We have offices in five European countries – Bulgaria, where are our Headquarters, Romania, Greece, Poland and Spain.
How will the current pandemic situation affect the business?
Europe is in full lockdown for 2 months now, and some countries are tightening the measures. Because what is clear to the naked eye is that confinement measures disrupted the global value chain and reduce work supply (limitation on non-essential industries, pressure on drivers). Governments and central banks have already announced policies in order to support the economy. Same goes for European Commission who announced large back up funds to all members. But this shock will probably create a recession. Let’s keep in mind the whole automotive market is at full stop in Europe. It is not expected to have a full and rapid recovery after this shock ends. Still we need to wait and see the evolution of the pandemic, as parts of the World are still to be affected, as well as to see the impact of the economic measures to be enforced.
What we are dealing with now is a completely new type of volatility of the markets. It is not arising from either supply or demand, but from a blockage of both due to the high and rapid rise of the pandemic. At this point, any business is focused on trying to minimize the effects, especially in the context of heavy social distancing measures enforced not only in Poland, or Europe, but globally. As in any crisis, there will be hard hit industries and others that will thrive.
Gopet and other logistics companies are somewhere in the middle, as we are strongly hit by the legal unheard of restrictions (which we completely support and follow to the letter) and the market contraction of most verticals. In this tough times we are actually testing ourselves and our business. We have suddenly switched to remote work which is not at all the norm in our industry. Also, given the first wave of state restrictions in Europe, we had to be highly prompt in transforming our internal procedures in order to ensure continuity for us, for our clients and for our subcontractors.
Digitalization is very present in our industry. On one hand, we could we could say that most of conditions are met under these circumstances to work remotely. On the other, this brings a new set of challenges to deal with, from how to remain connected and productive (especially in such tough markets). The impact of constant flow of bad news takes a significant toll on all of us, so finding motivation to push through may become rather difficult.
We are staying on top of this by simplifying drastically the way we communicate: clear, precise, with pre-defined frequency. It is not about control, is it about being prepared to take the next decision in split seconds.
To what extent will the closing of borders disturb or even prevent company business/functioning?
When Italy went into lockdown, and countries around it started closing down borders, the immediate effect was a standstill of the freight traffic, with huge queues of trucks measured in days of delays (80 hours waiting time at DE-PL). The whole industry was under stress, with drivers at its frontline. Everyone has been taken by surprise by the pandemic: countries, authorities, businesses, and people. Closing down borders may help a lot in containing the spread of the infection, but closing down borders for freight could be equally dangerous. Decrease of the transport volumes caused from the lockdown measures affects the Sales revenue at first. It is in a significant importance to act promptly, re-organize and adapt new business strategy and even model in order to stay stable and to keep the interest of our stakeholders. Borders were closed for particular products in some European counties, limited for other ones and stayed opened for the goods in significant importance for the normal daily functioning of the society. So far and because of our prompt actions and also diversified clients’ portfolio we manage to maintain activities at the safe level.
In this particular context we are waiting to see how the European states will react to and implement the recommendations of the European Commission on setting up green corridors for freight traffic. Some countries already implemented such corridors making freight traffic via country easier and eliminated queues of trucks on their boarders.
What are yours forecast for the next years?
We are in a constant development, planning new businesses and developing/entering on new markets. Anyhow, we should remember that the very competitive advantage one should have in order to survive the storm is the agility to act on change. Gopet has survived 2007-2008 financial crisis and went out different – business and social-wise and Gopet Poland was established as an outcome of what we learned then. Now that the shakedown has happened again, we will see more strategically focused companies coming out on top and I am confident that Gopet will be one of those organizations. It will come time to talk about business as the one before and after COVID-19. Now we focus on what we consider a core responsibility and a bigger challenge at this stormy times – to keep our people safe, to maintain an outstanding support for our clients and subcontractors and prepare our organization for the next cycle to come.
A new common sense is born under the tight measures the pandemic evoked and is a matter of maturity how businesses will use that as a competitive advantage. Now is the time to test your company culture and build a strong team. Now is the time to calibrate the strategy and step up with a new solutions, because crisis means also opportunity. Having an inspired and trustworthy team will help any organization to move forward and get out of the crisis stronger and better. On contrary, badly treated and underappreciated employees may cast enormous negative effects over the organization.
People create results (growth, profit) as long as they are motivated to doing so, they understand how they contribute or affect the business with their decisions. We leave room for errors because that allows for hands on experience. We try to avoid repetition of same error.