Change in Motion: Crown Drives Logistics in Disruptive Times

Jennifer Harvey is Group CEO of Crown Worldwide Group, a privately-owned logistics company with operations in 45 countries. Having spent more than 30 years at the business her father, Jim Thompson, founded in 1965, Jennifer brings deep operational knowledge and a global mindset shaped by roles in Japan, Singapore and the US – encompassing sales, marketing, CSR and general management.

She combines strategic leadership with a hands-on understanding of global logistics and sees current challenges in mobility and supply chains as moments for smart, focused growth.

Jennifer leads a diverse global team with energy, clarity and a deep respect for Crown’s roots and future.

For those less familiar with Crown, can you give us an overview of the organisation and its services?

Crown Worldwide Group is a privately-owned logistics business operating in 45 countries, spanning seven core divisions. We’re known for our international relocations – we’ve moved more than three million families globally since 1965 – but today our services are more evenly spread across several areas.

Our information management division helps organisations digitise archives, manage records and improve workflow – a growing focus for many. Our workspace business supports companies with office moves, refurbishments and circular services like IT and furniture reuse, helping clients adapt to changing workplace demands more sustainably.

We also run specialist services including Crown Fine Art, which handles museum-grade transport and installation of artworks, and Crown Logistics, which delivers secure, project-led freight solutions.

What unites everything we do is a combination of local delivery, global coordination and standards. What’s changing is the way clients use that infrastructure because, in a changing world, the needs are different. They are moving people to different destinations. And they are storing and managing assets for different reasons. It’s up to us to understand each client’s objective and figure out how to use our infrastructure to help them achieve it.

Supply chain resilience continues to dominate boardroom discussions. How have you led your team through this uncertain period and what advice would you offer peers?

Crown’s supply chain is a mix of local, in-country providers and offshore partners. For Crown, it is essential we have proper governance to ensure our supply chain partners comply with risk mitigating policies related to ethical business practices including information security, anti-bribery and corruption and insurances. 

We are also widening our commitment in ESG areas material to our businesses like labour rights and carbon reduction. This requires that we align our supply chain with our own targets. Where our supply chain has insufficient practices or knowledge on these topics, we have created formal training for them to complete prior to being approved to work with Crown. This creates the multiple benefits of reducing risk to our customers and Crown, expanding our positive impact and making our supply chain stronger for the future.

My advice during these, or any, times of uncertainty is to communicate more. This enables an organisation to share priorities and expectations, achieve mutual success and build trust. In the absence of proactive dialogue, your supply chain may make incorrect assumptions about what you expect of them, with disappointing results on both sides. Whether you need your supply chain to support you more in areas of quality, pricing or both, proactive, consistent and clear communication is essential to building strong relationships to make it happen. This will also make it more likely to successfully work together with your supply chain if uncertain macroeconomic factors disrupt your line of work.

My other advice is to leverage technology to document processes that bring those values to reality – creating platforms that capture required information to facilitate this.

How is Crown’s localised, tech-enabled model helping clients handle reduced flexibility in supply chain options?

Being close to our clients has always been one of our strengths. With our network of operations, we are physically close to both clients and supply chain, making it easier to work together.  

While we are a global company, most of Crown’s services are domestic. Because we do not sell or manufacture products, we are not facing the issues of needing to be flexible about which countries are produced or imported from. We are in services businesses and our partners are primarily in the same country where we are providing the suite of services.

Within our information management business, for instance, we digitise and store documents locally, often within a few miles of client offices. In our workspace division, everything from office design to office relocation is handled in-country – supporting organisations as they reconfigure spaces with less disruption and fewer emissions.

The one business where we actively maintain a global supply chain is our international relocation business – our Crown Relocations and Crown World Mobility brands. However, we are relocating people and employees to locations determined by the client. If the move involves a location without a Crown office, it necessitates using vetted providers there. So, regardless of what uncertainty or geopolitical factors exist, we need to maintain the supply chain in any country where we provide services to.

Across our businesses, the role of technology is to create efficiencies and, very importantly, to enhance visibility and transparency across stakeholders, from clients to service partners. Technology portals give clients end-to-end visibility – whether they’re relocating teams internationally or coordinating office projects locally. These tools support process and governance. However, a major benefit relates to what we mentioned earlier: communication. Technology helps give clients more control in an era of less certainty. While it’s helpful that we are in-country, most clients want tools that give them a way to see information about their service quickly and enable them to act decisively even when external factors are shifting.

How is Crown helping clients manage both political uncertainty and the push for localised services?

Because we’ve operated in so many countries for 60 years, we’ve seen many eras of political uncertainty, ranging from wars to pandemics to economic crises. These situations often trigger the movement of people and create additional demand for our Relocation business, which is also impacted by any shipping disruptions and price fluctuations. Those of us who have been in the business for a long time have become accustomed to endless changes to the environments we operate in. 

This enables us to focus on helping our customers navigate this. They are normally less accustomed to disruption and it’s our job to help them through it. 

For the other businesses – Information Management, Workspace, Fine Art, Wine Cellaring and others – we’ve built a framework that balances decentralised delivery with centralised standards. Local teams are empowered to act autonomously, but supported by global systems that ensure compliance, transparency and data integrity.

For example, our relocation clients can manage global assignments through one central platform, while still benefiting from local experts on the ground. In information management, we’re helping clients transition from paper to digital archives – not just to save space, but to deliver faster access, better security and improved sustainability.

The other answer to this question is that macroeconomic uncertainty creates requests for services that we have resources to offer but we’ve never been asked to provide before. It’s in our DNA to listen to such requests and have an open mind about how we can deliver them. For example, a Fine Art client with a library of specialised periodicals asked Crown to install a temporary reading room at one of our sites. In another example, a major employer asked us to help them create a digital process to collect tens of thousands of employee signatures to comply with new government legislation. There are many examples where the Crown team creatively used its knowledge and wider supply chain to create solutions to new problems. And amidst uncertainty, there are many opportunities for growth in new areas, if you recognise them as that. 

As clients move towards more local production and services, how does Crown balance cost pressures with sustainability goals?

It’s a key focus for us. Thankfully, many of our services are local – which helps with both cost and sustainability.

In workspace services, we help clients refurbish what they already own. IT equipment, office furniture and fittings are given a second life, rather than being replaced. That’s often more cost-effective and avoids unnecessary waste.

Our property footprint – more than US$1.4bn globally – enables us to offer local storage and logistics, cutting transport distances and emissions. We’re also investing in electric vehicles, where viable, and exploring ways to reduce packaging waste.

For some industries localisation and sourcing locally can increase cost but, in the service business, Crown sources locally to deliver locally. 

Looking ahead, how do you see the current trade environment shaping the logistics industry?

The logistics business is extremely diverse, so there is not one answer. The demand for employee relocation has decreased over the past decade as companies hire locally and use virtual technology. When these moves happen, shipment sizes are smaller but client expectations on transparency have increased. In this business, the traffic lanes continuously evolve. The strongest economies at any time typically attract volume and countries with tougher immigration policies or other challenges will see more departures. But the countries that fit those descriptions change. And this impacts which parts of the supply chain are under greater demand or pressure.

In our information management business, we have been experiencing growing demand in scanning of hard copy documents in our storage, for the purpose of making data available to a virtual workforce or for processing for digital documentation purposes. This has led to Crown and others growing their own resources or supply chain in those areas of digital services. Digitalisation also creates opportunities for cost savings in cases where companies do not need to retain hardcopy documents or pay for delivery to their offices.

In our workspace business, we see consolidation and reconfiguration of offices as many companies have adopted hybrid working and want to ensure that teams collaborate while in their office. For cost and sustainability reasons, our office furniture and equipment refurbishment and recycling are growing. Going forward, this would mitigate the risk of growing cost of new products due to tariffs.

Trust and transparency will also become more valuable. It’s no longer just about getting goods or people from A to B. It’s about informing customers to help them make smarter, more sustainable and more strategic choices.

At Crown, while we are a mid-sized player, our global scale has a unique reach and perspective. From that, I see our future isn’t fixed – we shape it every day in the decisions we make. There are great opportunities to make complex processes simpler for customers.

To read the full article in the magazine, click HERE.