Can “win-win” relationships be built in the TSL industry?
Dr. Rafał Tarasewicz, Director of Operations and Business Efficiency at DB Schenker
Currently, there is a lot of talk about partnership relationships based on the “win-win” principle. They form the foundation for building long-term partnerships based on trust. Negotiating from a position of strength does not lead to the long-term success of cooperating companies. An interesting trend in logistics outsourcing is currently so-called smartsourcing. It involves achieving set goals and assumed results by jointly determining optimal solutions through close partnership cooperation between the client and the logistics operator.
Key to understanding the concept of “win-win” seems to be delivering real value to the client. The Lean Management culture that we have been building at DB Schenker for several years supports us in this aspect. Thanks to the Lean culture, we systematically improve our processes and develop our employees. We constantly strive to provide customers with the highest level of service in each of the businesses we operate, i.e., air, ocean, land, and warehouse logistics. In this way, we implement the “win-win” approach. The basic “win” from the client’s perspective is receiving the real value they expect, while from the operator’s perspective, the “win” is satisfied customers.
Price is only one of the elements that customers pay attention to when choosing a partner. Especially with large and long-term contracts, many other aspects are very important, such as: service quality, business security, flexibility, and responsiveness. Territorial reach, information management, as well as financing issues and many others are also significant. The fundamental element in this aspect is providing the client with an individual solution that will deliver the maximum expected value. And this is possible within the framework of cooperation based on partnership relationships based on the “win-win” principle.