Beat Simon can safely say he has pretty much seen it all from a supply chain and logistics point of view, having taken his first steps into the industry back in the 1980s with DANZAS, which later became part of DHL Global Forwarding.

Over the ensuing years he has worked in various locations all over the world, including France, Mexico, Colombia, Brazil and the US. 

Between 2006 and 2013, Beat helped build Agility, now recognised as a global leader in supply chain services, infrastructure and innovation, before being invited to become President at APL Logistics. 

In 2022 he joined fellow industry giant DP World, where he serves as Global Chief Commercial Officer for Logistics.

It’s been a busy couple of years for DP World, which has increasingly expanded into end-to-end supply chain services in a bid to remain competitive. 

Shedding light on the background behind this ongoing transformation, Beat explains: “Going back you had the port business, the carrier business and the freight forwarding business. What we’ve seen in the last 18 months is a lot of consolidation and asset-heavy providers going into end-to-end. 

“We are in a totally different environment where you have, for instance, big shipping lines buying big freight forwarders – not officially using the same name but you have, for instance, CMA CGM buying CEVA.”

Becoming an end-to-end logistics provider

DP World is nothing less than a powerhouse of logistics, moving around 10% of global trade through its infrastructure.

Operating more than 800 locations for logistics, marine services and ports and terminals, its handling capacity stands at roughly 95 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs).

A recent boost in capacity comes after DP World put forward a new strategy in 2022, setting out its intention to be an end-to-end supplier providing logistics at scale.

“When you look at it from DP World’s perspective, we were mainly an asset-heavy provider in ports, terminals and free zones,” says Beat. “We said, ‘in future we want to be directly in front of customers’ – the beneficial cargo owners (BCOs), as we call them in logistics.”

Helping to facilitate this transition was the newly-acquired syncreon, a supply chain solutions provider, and Imperial, an Africa-focused provider of integrated market access and logistics solutions.

They form part of what Beat refers to as a “toolbox of end-to-end services” that DP World can provide to BCOs. 

“I’m often asked ‘how do you deal with your freight forwarder being your competition but also your customer?’,” he continues. “Where we are today is an environment of collaboration and competition. We work together in certain areas, we compete in certain areas and we try to offer our customers the best solution, which is a big change.”

Harnessing the power of technology

Technology is, of course, playing a central role in DP World’s transition to becoming an end-to-end service provider. 

The organisation is working alongside a host of big-name providers and, as discussed, putting resources into M&A in this space, but a conscious decision has also been made to do a lot of the necessary work internally.

“That was a big discussion,” Beat goes on. “Our overall goal was to double our logistics business and one of our focuses was freight forwarding.

“What we said is that 50% growth comes from M&A and 50% from organic, because in M&A you never know. It’s like a relationship – you get together, you learn, see if the chemistry is good. You look at the company, do the due diligence, then you decide – but you never know if you can conclude.”

Beat points to the rise of the cloud over the past decade as a game-changer for DP World and countless other businesses in the supply chain and logistics field. 

Whereas in the past each office was like an independent company, with its own finance, HR, legal and IT functions, the modern-day picture looks rather different. 

Looking back even further, Beat says: “We had digitisation when we went from the typewriter and put documents on a system, but all those systems were standalone. Today, of course, you have the cloud so you can centralise a lot more of the different systems and link everything in one place.

“We are linking everything to a base platform, from our ports, to our marine service, to our freight forwarding. It gives you that visibility, which, as we saw during COVID, is key.”

Visibility meets exception management 

Supply chain visibility is a topic whose importance Beat can barely emphasise enough.

He believes it will have a huge part to play in the industry’s evolution over the coming years, but not necessarily for the reasons many may think. 

His take is that leaders’ thoughts relating to visibility should be more heavily focused on situations where transportation doesn’t go to plan, a concept he and DP World call ‘exception management’.

“It’s one thing having visibility,” he explains, “but let’s assume your customer upscales and you have thousands of shipments – you don’t want to know where your shipments are; you want to know which one isn’t coming as planned. 

“If you have a standalone system, it’s very difficult to reach that. You can have visibility but then it's very difficult to know the exception.”

DP World’s answer is to use workflow technology where every step in the supply chain is a milestone with a timestamp, allowing operations teams to examine the workflow and assess where things are going wrong. 

As a result, they can easily measure milestones, take action and better optimise the supply chain. 

Beat continues: “A lot of people might ask, where is my container? We’re working on the next step, exception management, which looks at which shipments do not perform as planned. We want visibility beyond the container level or purchase-order level.

“For me, the technology side is about looking at what isn’t working, because otherwise there is so much information.”

The only constant is change

Beat highlights the difficulties being faced by today’s supply chain decision-makers given the wide range of priorities they must consider and objectives they are being asked to achieve.

At the heart of this, he says, is the need to juggle cost savings, supplier diversity, resilience and environmental goals.  

“There are a lot of new challenges in the supply chain where customers are having to reposition,” he concludes. “Within that, I think DP World is excellently positioned to offer solutions. 

“Since I came into this industry, the only constant has been change. It’s part of our life in supply chain and logistics. That’s also why it’s so interesting and exciting. Most people I know, once they are hooked into logistics, into supply chain, they stay forever.”

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