Episode 28:
Why change management will make your supply chain competitive

Digital transformation is needed to tackle the current market and a digital freight forwarder can help you achieve this. However, change management can be difficult especially as people can be afraid of change when the market is moving so quickly.

So how can we educate our peers on the benefits of changing to a digital freight forwarder?

In episode 28 of Freight to the Point, Elvy Jenniskens, Global Logistics and Transport Specialist at Thetford joins Helena Wood to discuss Thetford’s move to digital supply chain processes and how they used data to optimise their supply chain.

We’ll be exploring:

• Setting the foundations in the supply chain using quality data
• How to work with a digital freight forwarder to set up an efficient supply chain framework
• How to succeed with change management

Elvy Jenniskens
Elvy is the Global Logistics & Transport Specialist at Thetford Group and has worked in supply chain roles in the FMCG industry. Since joining Thetford in 2021, Elvy focuses on connecting and optimising the company’s global supply chain to ensure it stays competitive.

Resources

• Do freight forwarders need to become technology companies?
• What does strategic value look like from a freight forwarder?

Transcription

Hello, and welcome to another episode of Freight to the Point, a podcast by Zencargo. I’m Helena Wood, and today I am delighted to be joined by Elvy Jenniskens, the Global Logistics and Transport specialist at the Thetford Group. Thetford is the world’s leading manufacturer of mobile sanitation products for the RV, marine camping and truck markets. And today we’re going to be delving into Thetford’s approach to their supply chain and how they’ve managed the change management process when switching to a digital freight forwarder like Zencargo. So welcome Elvy, it’s great to have you here.

Thanks for having me.

No, thank you for joining. And why don’t we get started with helping our audience understand. Can you tell us a little bit more about Thetford and about your role at the business?

Yeah, so Thetford is an American based organisation and we have two pillars in the organization. So an American branch and what we call the rest of the world one. And in the rest of the world we have China through to Australia, to UK, to the Netherlands. So everything not American is in the other branch. And basically what we do is from the American branches, we supply the American market, and from the rest we supply the rest of the world. And we sell toilets and refrigerators to, as you said, like the RV industry. Basically what we’ve seen is that we have had a massive growth during the Corona years and with that came the need to change and to step up our game. And my role is to really bridge and bring all the entities together, because in the past they were working very much standalone-ish and no one knew what the other one was doing, and with my role we tried to bridge that gap.

And is that a new role in the business Elvy, because it’s such an interesting position being in that pivotal role, bringing all the teams together? How did that come about?

I don’t know, because I wasn’t working here before and they came up with this role, because they saw the need to harmonise, integrate, share best practices. And actually I just saw the role advertised and I thought, wow, that’s a good one. That’s a nice one. I’ll do that. So I applied and I got it and yeah, we just started from scratch, so it was really good.

Amazing. And obviously we are here today to of talk specifically about supply chain. I’d love to get a sense from you, we’re going to talk a bit about before and after, and I’m sure we’ll spend quite a bit of time on the after, but can you paint a picture for our listeners of what was before? So before this change management process, how did the supply chain work at Thetford?

Yeah, so one of the first things I was tasked with, was to build a ocean freight framework. Within our internal supply chain we shipped some 3000 containers a year and we used some 15 different freight forwarders for that. So it was very scattered around and no one knew what the other one was doing. There was no global insight into cost. On local level, there was no detail level into the cost inside and we were lacking updates on the estimated time of arrivals of the containers. We didn’t know what were shipping, so we knew the container was on the water but we didn’t actually know what was in the container. So it was pretty much a black box and not just one black box but then 15 black boxes, because we used that many different freight forwarders. It was the dark ages.

And had the business got into that position intentionally, or was that just the product of lots of moving parts, maybe not particularly clear ownership? How did it get to that point?

No, it has to do with the setup of how we are structured. Each and every entity has its own P&L responsibility and with that they were very much focused on delivering the results by themselves. So not really acting as Thetford Global but as either Thetford Italy or Thetford America, and that’s how it just came about. And everyone was doing their own thing and to a pretty good level, but there was just no corporation and no transparency on group level. And also, being a niche player in a niche market, we were able to do that in a way. But then when Corona hit, our volumes, they just exploded, because no one could travel by plane, so a lot of people moved to RVs and caravans and our demands just grew and we basically outgrew our processes and way of working with that in those years. And that’s why they have created my role and that’s why I’m doing what I’m doing.

But I think it’s really interesting, because I can imagine there may well be shippers listening to this episode thinking that they’re in a similar situation, which is a bit messy through no fault or intention of anyone’s. But particularly when a business is trying to grow or a business is addressing maybe market pressures. And market pressures can be positive pressures in the way that they were for your business during COVID, huge demand and need to address that. But business pressures can also be challenging in the other direction, reduced demand, volatility between different countries for example, or different entities.

But also cost, I mean cost was rising.

Absolutely. And obviously, what we’ve all seen in supply chain to your point around cost, is from a leadership perspective the lens that went from being a thousand foot view to a microscopic view on supply chain, because everyone suddenly wanted to know every single movement of goods and how much it was going to cost and what it was going to mean for the business. So, it’s great that you made this change and you’ve got this unique role.

Absolutely, yeah. And also with my background, I come from the food industry, which is the more developed industry than this industry, and coming from supply chain management roles, I also knew the operations. So I was very hands on with convincing my colleagues what to do and why we needed to do what we needed to do. So yeah, it’s been great so far, because it was needed.

So let’s keep going through this journey. So you came into your new role, multiple entities doing different things, lots of different forwarders, data’s a bit of a mess, everyone’s probably a bit stressed. What was the big picture dream that you then wanted to transform all of this into?

Move to a data driven system based process, where we’d have the incoming warehouses, suppliers, planning, everything integrated and working from the same source of data. That was really the goal that I was working towards, because what we see is that we still have a lot of manual processes. So if we don’t know when a container is coming in, it’s manual updating that the schedules, it’s last minute decisions on what to do in planning or even stop production. And there was so many hiccups in our supply chain and my goal was to identify all those hurdles and find a solution that would work in solving, and helping to solve, those hiccups and just have a smooth supply chain. And that was also one size fits all for us globally. We do have our unique things locally and we need to look after those but the one thing that we need to focus on as well, is just global, because we are a global company so why not use that?

And of course then enters Zencargo. We started to partner on how to work things together and how to build out the supply chain processes. What was that initial journey of beginning to work with Zencargo like?

It was really, really good, because as I said, I come from the food industry so this industry was all new to me. So I really needed someone that I could partner up with, and Ocean Freight was not that known to me either. So what I really, really liked is when I had the first conversation with your colleagues, Mark and James, is that they really took us by the hand and showed us, hey this is not about shipping containers from A to B, but really about unlocking your supply chain and understanding what’s going well and what can be improved and how data can help to optimise your supply chain. So that was really the key factor for me when I first met them. Like hey they are here to help me and understand what I need and how we can improve the supply chain instead of saying, okay, what is it that you want? What is it that you need? Which is what I tend to see when I was meeting with the old school forwarders.

Obviously I’m very pleased to hear that and I’m glad that we were able to begin partnering together. I’m really keen to then hear about what was happening after the meeting ended and once you started to then work with your peers and started to begin that early phase of change management. You were going to look at using a new system, bringing in a new forwarder. I’m going to make an assumptive guess it probably wasn’t super easy. So what happened then?

So what happened then is that in that initial meeting where we did a mapping of the process to understand what we were doing, it was me and two other colleagues, and it was on Teams because it was COVID still. And as soon as that meeting finished my two colleagues and we were just looking at each other, wow this is what we need, because this is so much more than just, as I said, shipping the container from A to B but it can interface with our ERP system. We can have constant updates into our planning schedules, into our order portfolio, and we were like this is really what we need. And with that enthusiasm on our side, it was not that hard to convince others, because we immediately had the tools to talk to our peers and tell them what was in it for them. And with Zencargo, location is not that important. So I was already able to tell my colleagues as well hey, we can apply this in Europe, in China, in America and we have this thing, this platform, that we can just roll out globally and make it work. So it was not hard in the beginning, because everyone knew that we had to change, and with the in-depth that especially James and Mark showed us in the beginning, we overcame a lot of hurdles at the start convincing them this is what we need to do. Because it’s been a major change and it’s still a major change and it’s a journey that will go on for at least a year to come, before we are at the desired level. But that initial step was really, really crucial and really, really good to have that luggage on board, this is what we need to do and this is how we’re going to approach this journey.

Fantastic. And was the next step then around collating data and making sure that everyone had the aligned inputs and data points, or what happened after that then?

What I did, because first I thought this is too good to be true, so I had a long short list of potential suppliers and we looked at processes, how are we going to work? I asked for some quotes to see if the prices were on par, just those normal checks. What is it that we have here in front of us? As I said, sometimes it looked too good to be true, like oh there’s so much in it, so much advantages when we ticked all those boxes. So I set some deliverables at the beginning of the process. I wanted to work digital, I wanted to work global, I wanted to have insight in CO2 reporting, et cetera. And Zencargo basically ticked all the boxes. And then what we did, we had several mapping sessions. So with planning with the incoming warehouse, having one of our factories ourselves that we use to leverage with as well understanding what is the impact for you, how do we set the supply chain? So we just took it step by step and we decided on a phased approach where we are going to go with Asia to Europe first, and then more specifically Asia to the Netherlands. And now we’re rolling out to Italy to the UK and also Europe, America to China. So it’s just a phased approach. So we can just take it step by step and basically what we’ve done with the experiences that we gained here in the Netherlands, we’ve applied that to the rest of the entities as well. So we did all the mapping sessions, we spoke to all the stakeholders in every entity. We kept them on board, we asked them all the questions, we answered all their questions. So it’s been a lot of work just preparing, but it’s been really, really great to do it like that, because we’ve overcome a lot of hurdles and we’ve been able to show all our stakeholders what’s in it for them. Because the good thing is there’s a big advantage for our planning department, because we’ve decided to go live on an API straight away. So all the changes and all the ETAs and TDs are already interfaced to our systems. So away are all the last minute changes in planning. We know upfront now what’s happening and what’s not happening. For the warehouse it’s been very good to have a digital overview of what’s coming in. We’ve linked it to our ERP system again to do the goods receipts in the warehouse. So yeah, it’s brought a lot of change and benefits to a lot of people. And with the first container shipped in the last month, we now have a decent database, so we also have been able to start working on the financial insights and that’s been a tough one, because we didn’t have a detailed financial insight. And with the platform we are able to have the financial insight on secure level and I really had to talk to my finance colleagues, hey I’ve got something for you and this is good, this is really what you want. And they were like, Oh really? Are you sure? And it was that advanced that initially they didn’t really get it, so I really had to take them by the hand and we had some sessions with them as well just give them a show around the platform and see what was feasible to get the data for them. So they know now we have the cost on trade lane, the supplier, the skew. It’s just given us so much information that we can then take back to our management decisions.

I think that’s such an interesting, I mean there are multiple interesting points and everything you said there obviously. Let’s break them down. The first is, you’ve obviously really reaped the benefits that you sowed in terms of entering into this process with a clear set of objectives and process and your scoring framework for when you were looking at different suppliers, which I can imagine must have really helped you align those internal stakeholders and create transparency around what your expectation was and what good was going to look like, and hopefully is helping you keep us to account, because you’ve got something you’re measuring us against, that original expectation.

Yeah, absolutely. We are doing that.

And then we get into the process of, so you measured, you found the right partner, you then started to go through the steps of beginning to work with that partner, getting the data together and you’re right, you spoke about your first shipments and those first shipments are so important on both sides. For us coming from the forwarding position, we really want to make sure we can successfully get those first shipments out of the way, we can move everything in the way you expect it to. We can get you a rate that you’re happy with, but then the power of that first of set of data is really interesting, isn’t it? Suddenly you’re armed with everything that you thought and hoped you would have.

Absolutely.

And it sounds like that the slight challenge is then almost what to do with it. And it’s exactly that analogy you’re giving of your financing, you’ve got more data than you’ve had before and suddenly you’ve got this amazing decision making ability and how’s that trickled through? So you mentioned your finance team and then you spoke about the fact that that feeds through to your management decisions. What’s that looked like in real terms? Are there any eureka moments that you’ve had, or decisions that you’ve been able to make that you just couldn’t possibly have made beforehand?

One of the first small things, but important one, what we saw is early pickups at suppliers. So we have mainly EX-Works trade lanes and we saw that suppliers, even our internal factories, were requesting early pickups, which is not good for us, because I mean that means detention on origin side. And just having that insight helped us to go back to the suppliers and talking to them, like hey why is it that you require an early pickup? Is it that you don’t have enough dock space, don’t have enough warehouse space, don’t we have the right lead times in place? And just that small thing just opens up so many good things that you can talk about then again with your supplier and work on improving. Because we didn’t know those things before. We got an invoice, we just signed it off, but we didn’t understand what was happening. And now with this platform we have that insight and also with the analytics and the reporting that’s available on the platform, you can really dig down deep down into a specific trade lane or a supplier and understand what’s going on. So we have a lot of knowledge and understanding of our suppliers that we didn’t have before. And on the larger scale what we do, but we are not there yet, because we’ve just started, is understanding how the volumes move and operate. And we use the quote option a lot to see if we need to make changes to our network. So just that one platform, the one thing that gives you all the information, is been so beneficial to us. Because that gone are the emails on, oh who do I ask this quote to? Everything is there and everything can be traced. So that’s really, really been helpful. So it’s both on the small things as I said, but also on a larger scale to determine how to build our network when it comes to manufacturers and suppliers.

Which is so interesting. And from a change management perspective that must have changed the nature of many people’s roles in the business in terms of what they’re actually looking at, the data that they have to hand to make decisions, the process that they might go through to make decisions. How has that been? Has there been pushback or have you needed to educate people?

We are in the process of that right now. You see that I’m very comfortable with the platform, I’m very comfortable with the information that I can get off the platform, and now I have to show my colleagues from procurement, from planning what’s available. So for them it’s all new and it’s like, what is she bringing to us? This is really fantastic, but daunting as well, because it’s all new to them and whoa, there is so much. So we are in the process of that. So what I do is I schedule calls with them, I send them emails, I send them updates, screenshots from the platform, asking them what is it that they need, making suggestions, we have this available for you, this might be of help in this and that respect. So yeah, that’s my roadshow that I’m doing at the moment to especially help our procurement team and finance team to step up as well.

Excellent. And I think obviously you’ve got so much energy and passion for this project, I can imagine you really helping take people by the hand and get them through this change process and make sure they’re very excited about this new data they have to hand.

Yeah, but the good thing is, it’s quite easy. As I said, we were pretty old fashioned, so with Zencargo coming in, we make a big step say from a 3 out of 10 to an 8 out of 10, which is more easier than going from 7.5 to an 8, because then it’s just minor tweaks. Whereas this is so substantial and so just so there. There’s no question about it that this is helping us and bringing us a lot of good things. So that makes it a bit easier for me. And communication is everything really. So I listen to everyone and I tell them what we are doing and try to engage with them as much as I can, what their needs are and why we are moving to a global framework instead of 15 different frameworks.

I’m sure that must be appreciated. And has there been any pushback or have there been any challenges that you haven’t anticipated?

Pushbacks along the lines of people not knowing what’s in it for them. So they are delaying sharing information with me. So we had to push back a go live, because we didn’t have all the right information from the beginning. But it’s not necessarily a pushback, it’s more, hey I’m new to the role, I’m not sure, there’s a lot of things going on. As I said, we’ve had major growth during Corona so everyone’s just trying to keep their head above water. So they didn’t have always time to work on this. So it’s more to do with that than really a pushback. What is this that you are bringing?

That makes a lot of sense. And I’d love to switch our angles and let’s think a little bit around, obviously you’ve told us so much about your personal experience and thank you for sharing that and thank you for being such an advocate for change and for working in this sort of brave new way. I’m sure there are shippers listening to our podcast today who are maybe where you were a few months ago and thinking about making this change and thinking about going out to assess a different forwarder or taking on the process or looking to redesign their own process. Do you have any advice for someone who’s in that position and doesn’t quite know where to get started?

Plan a call with you guys? As I said before-

Thank you. That’s exactly what you needed to say.

Now what I really, really liked, is that first initial call where you take the lead, where Zencargo takes the lead and opens up that supply chain and shows us there’s so much more to this than just shipping containers from A to B. So that would be my main advice, because Albert Einstein say if you always did what you done, then you always get what you got. So, if you just don’t go off that beaten track, then nothing will change. And what we did, is we just had an open view, Okay, what’s possible? Where are we? What’s out there? What’s what’s in the world? We all know by data, we all know about internet and other things, so why not use that? So that’s what we did. So we really looked for something new. So that would be my advice as well. And open up that horizon and broaden your scope and trust to listen to someone else. Don’t always think, hey I know best because I work in this organization. What I felt when I was talking to your guys, is that so much about your industry and that’s so beneficial to us. So if I was just a stick to our processes and how we’ve done it before, then no change would be delivered. And just open up and realize that that shipping containers is all about unlocking your supply chain potential.

Excellent, thank you for sharing that. And then I suppose the inverse version of that question is how about driving change internally? So if you’re a shipper in a business who thinks things could be better, but you might be struggling with pushback from your senior stakeholders or a lack of investment or a lack of engagement, how can you unlock things within the business?

So what I did is, we had some very stable relationships with some of our suppliers. Some of our freight forwarders, we worked with them for plus 20 years. So one of the first things I did, is talk to our senior management about hey, is this what we want? If you want to have a global supply chain, if you want to have a global framework, it might come at a cost, and the cost might be that we have to say goodbye to some of our incumbent partners. They don’t necessarily have to be bad or bad performing, but if we want to go global, it comes at a cost. So I did take quite some time to talk that through with the management and they all agreed and they signed off on it, and with their signing off on it, that gave me the backing I needed to convince people in the organisation. So imagine if you are working with a freight forwarder for more than 20 years and you just pick up the phone and you know all about his family or her family and et cetera, then this is a big change. Because you have to deal with different people, it’s online. It’s not just a phone call away. But with the backing of my senior management, I was able to do that. So I could listen to them and then reply with the reasons why we were moving forward and why we were building this ocean framework for our global network. So it all came down to spending a lot of time in preparation at the beginning, understanding what we needed, signing off on that, and then just go and just keep that on the horizon. And at times also go back to the management, go back to people like, hey, this is what we are doing. We’re about to cut a chain here, or cut a chain there, are you still okay? And just carry on. And yeah, it’s been good so far. It’s a struggle, but it’s been good. And the struggle is really on that personal level when people have to let go of old ways of working.

Elvy, thank you. You’ve given us so much excellent advice for shippers. I wonder if you could help us wrap it all up into three top tips for any professionals who are wanting to implement large scale changes to their supply chain.

So my top three tips would be open, listen to what people need, but also be open on what you want to achieve and why you want to achieve it, so no hidden agendas. I would say you also need to be engaged. So what I’ve done is, I’ve tried to be very hands on and talk to a lot of people all the time about what’s going on and what’s happening. And the third one would be what I just said before, is keep the dot on the horizon. Keep focus towards the end goal that you want to achieve.

Love that. Thank you so much. Now let’s get on to, we’ve got a couple of things we do with all of our guests on the podcast, Elvy. The first is that we’d like to ask all of our guests about a ship happens moment in their career. We know that in this challenging world of supply chain, even when we all put in our best efforts and when work our hardest, sometimes it’s still a bit of a ship happens day. Is there any story from your career that you’d like to share?

Yeah, there is one. Oh well there’s multiple of course, but the one that I’d like to share is the following. At the beginning of Corona, I was working for a food company. Well in the network we had a very large warehouse, but only two loading docks. It was just disaster. But when Corona hits, we made it happen. We improved our demand planning, our supply planning, our order portfolio management, and we were so happy. We even improved on our safety, so how the way of working in the warehouse itself and then we wanted to continue that when the pressure dropped and then we were told no, we go back to the old way of working. And that was such a shit day in my career, that you really worked towards all those changes, improvements, the whole team was happy, the warehouse was running brilliantly and then you get told, no go back. So that was like, ah, this is not supply chain, because we always have to move forward.

That sounds exceedingly frustrating. I was going to say something nice about how the challenges of COVID really helped us learn under intense pressure and how we took on good lessons, but it sounds like you got halfway there and then had to go back, which really will have been a tough day. Ship happens though, as we say. And let’s get onto our quick fire question round. So every week Elvy, we ask our guest two or three quick fire questions about how they think about the industry at the moment. So first one is a personal one. If you could have any other job in the supply chain space just for a day, what would you like to do?

I would like to be in charge of supply chain in the medical sector in a hospital or a medical center of any sorts.

Ooh, that’d be really interesting. Very high pressure, I’m imagining. And can you sum up the supply chain market today in three words?

Oh, rapidly changing, that’s one. Focused on data, focused on processes. And the third one, there’s no stability.

Pretty fair, volatile, and challenging, isn’t it? And Elvy, what’s the biggest lesson that you’ve learned while working in this industry?

During my time here at Thetford, what I’ve learned the most is that you can accomplish a lot when you’re open and you’re working towards a goal and you make sure that everyone is in on that goal as well.

It’s a really important lesson. Well Elvy, thank you so, so much for joining us on today’s episode and sharing your own journey at Thetford, but also giving so much practical guidance and advice to other shippers who might be looking at making change in their supply chain. It’s been really valuable to hear from you. Thank you.

Love doing it.

Well I hope to have you back again. And to all of our listeners, thank you very much for joining us today and tuning in to another episode of Freight To the Point we really hope that you’ve enjoyed it as much as we have. Don’t forget to like and subscribe to our show. And if you have any questions for Elvy or myself, you can reach out on LinkedIn. I’m sure we’d love to follow up. Thank you.