Revenue leakage: Inside a logistics company

To describe revenue leakage in a logistics company, it is important to know how such a company works in general terms.

A logistics company brings together transport and warehousing service providers with companies who need to distribute good. These service providers might be part of the logisitics company or third parties, but are always treated, by the billing department, as third parties. Both the clients and the service providers are based in different countries and many, many locations need to be served by the distribution network.
The clients need goods to be transported from a number of distribution centers to a large number of destinations. And, sometimes, from these destinations back to the distribution centers. Based on these needs, the client agrees with the logistics company what kind of services it needs and how much it is going to pay for those. A contract is drawn up with precise definitions of the activities contracted, as well as a table with rates (prices) for these activities, usually called rate cards. Typical activities include incoming phone calls at a call center, receipt of wares in the warehouse (inbound), preparation of wares for transportation (outbound) and the transportation of the wares to the destination. This transportation can happen by air, by truck, by courier, express, same day, next day, etc.
In the same way that there is a contract and a rate card between the clients and the logistics company, there are contracts and rate cards between the logistics company and the different service providers. Ideally, the activities are defined in the same way in both contracts, but that is not always the case. Naturally, there should be a difference in the rate cards of the clients and the providers, which is how the logistics company generates their revenue: clients pay a higher price for an activity than the price the logistics company pays to their service providers. In exchange, the logistics company maintains and operates the distribution network for the client.

Revenue leakage in the logistics business

My consulting job at DHL was to look for revenue leakages in the billing department of one of their units. During a reunion with my master thesis team, including the professor who counselled us (Prof. Schiereck, then at EBS, now TU Darmstadt) I discussed this shortly with them. From this discussion, my friend Boris, who is a lawyer as well as an MBA, sent me an e-mail analyzing revenue leakages from a point of view of a law office. I started to write him a response, but decided to use the blog for this, explaining a bit more about revenue leakages in a logistics company.
I will do so in a small series of articles in the next days. I think this is a good way to power up this blog again after a long pause.

First week at the new job, last post?

Please click on the image to read my text. It was an experiment and it didn't come out exaclty as planned. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Pulse Smartpen: quick and dirty review

**** (that's 4 stars out of 5)
Potentially life changing gadget

I believe the Pulse Smartpen is a fantastic platform for many day-to-day applications. The working principle of it just makes so much sense!
Fortunately, there is an SDK for external developers, unfortunately, file formats and communication standards don't seem to be open, but I am no software expert.

But back to the pen. Very well crafted, looks serious and professional. I can really use it in a board meeting. Although it is kind of bulkier than I expected, but maybe my expectations were too high. On the other hand, it is smaller than many highlighters in the market.

The screen is very good.

Interface quite intuitive everywhere: pen, software, notebook.

Writing recognition works fantastically well! Not only is the transferred "image" very detailed and looks natural, the software recognized my handwriting without any previous "training" when using the search function.

I do seem have to have problems transferring the audio sessions, which can be a deal breaker, but Customer Service has been very responsive so far and I hope to clear this soon.

All in all, I am very happy with the purchase, as long as the audio part starts working properly. I believe there is room for improvement and further development, especially in extra applications for it and am awaiting eagerly to beef up the functionality of my pen.

Written for: http://www.amazon.com/review/R374WV94NBJ5C8/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm

An encounter in Brussels

Written on my phone on the plane coming to Brazil.

The Belgian who took over my apartment in Brussels is an ex-TV reporter who has once been to an extremely remote area in Brazil to cover a story about seringueiros, castanha-do-pará and indians trying to live in a sustainable way. He said that reality isn't as romantic as it sounds.
He has been living in Congo for years now, working with NGOs rebuilding bridges. More than 80. He told that you just had to free things up, and people would do the rest. He rebuilt the bridges and saw the business men coming, and thinks profit is a good thing to bring on development.
We talked about living with few things. Me with only what fits in a suitcase, him with what he had available in two years of living in the jungle. Less is more.
Another thing he told was that, in his experience, the best thng NGOs could do was to dissiminate knowledge.
Cool guy, this Jan. Good way to leave Brussels.

BusinessWeek's slideshow of Queen's School of Business

My colleague Manish sent us an interesting link to this slideshow at BusinessWeek:

Queen's School of Business Tour

Je suis arrivé au Brésil.

Temperature at 9 o' clock in the morning.


At my uncle's in the middle of São Paulo. Yes, it's true.


Tomorrow, the beach! See you in 2009.