Craft - Crafting Closer Connections to help local businesses thrive

to help local businesses thrive P R O J E C T

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BUSINESS INTERVIEW

Priscilla Bueno, Chief Transformation Officer at Craft discusses the company’s comprehensive approach to international supply chain innovation.

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Craft is a Brazilian multinational specialising in international transportation, focused on the consolidation and negotiation of contracts in ocean, air and land to all stakeholders of the logistics industry.

Founded in 1997, it has operations in 10 countries and 35 offices spread across South and North America.

Based on solutions of scale, Craft optimises and ensures quality, frequency and control of every shipment by connecting its 1,100 specialists to global networks specialised in each modal through technology and people. It is the founder of its own procurement centres in Asia, Europe and the United States (LP Global and WSL) and is known for its close relationships with its customers and partners.

Craft offers exclusive routes and services that only a neutral 4

“Craft is a company that is unique in a way that it’s never been afraid to react quickly and go wherever the industry needs”

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wholesaler with significant volume and flexibility can provide.

Here to tell us more about the supply chain innovation and technological strategies at Craft is Priscilla Bueno, Chief Transformation Officer.

Priscilla sets the scene by explaining how Craft wields a relationshipdriven approach to global logistics, 6

drawing on the company’s rich heritage of operating in complicated and challenging circumstances, and elaborating on her role leading the transformation strategy at the company.

“According to a Gartner Future of Supply Chain Survey, whilst 95% of supply chains must quickly react to changing conditions, only 7%

are able to execute decisions in real-time. Craft is a company that is unique in a way that it’s never been afraid to react quickly and go wherever the industry needs, in order to improve the ease of doing business in the complex environment of international logistics, which is even more challenging in the South American market, where we were born into,” says Priscilla.

“But moreover, we understand the meaning of relationships in order to act effectively in such circumstances, on all key points of the supply chain, and the way our teams are built clearly reflects that. Based on both these factors, the best use of technology accelerates our model in not only operational excellence, but more importantly, commercial innovation as well. Whilst several 7

“First and foremost, Craft believes that each one of its people is key to ensuring longlasting relationships and partnerships in all of our markets, at all levels” Priscilla Bueno, Chief Transformation Officer

industries are struggling to power up their supply chain capabilities, Craft already has in its DNA the capacity to offer such skills ‘as a service’, with a modular and flexible portfolio of solutions to logistics providers.

“With our stronghold in market and product intelligence, combined with a fine-tuned grasp of the movements of transportation around the world, we expand our capability towards a more modern and scalable model, where the business and all its connections are still at its core – which is where transformation really thrives. My role is not only to put together a strong technology team, but also to oversee people & purpose, communication & marketing, governance, agility and education and connect them to all areas of the business – while inspiring change only in the areas where we 8

know we will benefit from them as a company. That is, it’s not change for the sake of it, but rather a movement to connect and ensure that every company and person that is part of our ecosystem feels like they have prospered more with us as a part of it.

“Our five business and innovation drivers are sustainable growth through international and product

expansion, excellence in operations and fast delivery of complex data in a simple manner, governance and security with a focus on the value chain, people development and intra-entrepreneurship and business transformation through technology. With these five drivers in our everyday actions, we honour what we have built so far and seek to enhance it. In light of this, my role is to be an interpreter between all valid

interests in the everyday business, a crucial position in the facilitation of transformation.”

So how has Craft taken these five drivers and deployed innovation within its supply chain strategy in recent years?

“From the building of every one of our products in the South American markets, we have pioneered in 9

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expanding the concepts of a neutral consolidator beyond the LCL groupage,” explains Priscilla. “Based on solutions of scale, Craft optimises and ensures quality, frequency and control of every shipment with specialists in each modal. With that in mind, we founded our own procurement centres for ocean and road transportation in Asia, Europe and the United States (through the brands LP Global and WSL). From Asia, we are the largest procurement centre in our markets. With initiatives such as these, and human-centric work, we offer exclusive routes and services that only a neutral wholesaler with significant volume and flexibility can provide. And furthermore, while 75% of supply chain leaders believe engaging in circular economy activities is important, and only 1 in 5 use such principles, our business model is built entirely on offering one of its key models, with optimisation and consolidation of movements as our main offer.

“Innovation then arises naturally from how we manage our solutions, with exclusive hubs and contracts, multiple points of entry and how we are applying technology in order to successfully control allocation, track and trace in real-time with 98% accuracy, people training and reskilling to

adapt to artificial intelligence and machine learning. We also promote innovation competitions internally and accelerate winning initiatives.

Our most recent ones included developments in customer experience, product enhancement, people development in direct coordination overseas and robotic process automation in customer care.

“Craft always seeks to apply efforts using an ambidextrous mindset. We look to the present and to the future simultaneously, in order to embrace all three horizons of innovation, which are: 1. Optimising core operations for efficiency, reducing resource consumption and enhancing sustainability within existing business processes.

2. Exploring adjacent opportunities and markets, investing in sustainable services to capture emerging trends and foster longterm growth.

3. Pursuing radical innovation and disruption by investing in transformative technologies and business models.

“Balancing these three horizons through aligned management enables us to drive value creation while actively contributing to a more sustainable and competitive future.”

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“As Craft navigates transformative change as a company, Priscilla adds that strategic partnerships are essential for promoting growth and commercial success” Priscilla emphasises the importance of technology within the innovative transformation strategies at Craft, but stresses that it is people who ultimately wield these solutions for the benefit of the business.

“Technology and people play a key role in terms of providing us with the necessary framework and sustainable base for change,” says Priscilla. “And it works because we are able to connect the business to their developments. In return, our technology teams drive us towards an agile mindset, in keeping with our data-driven fluency in check, 12

ensuring that all our developments are cloud-first, and effectively guiding us with the best use of new market developments arising from game changers such as the fast advance of artificial intelligence, advanced analytics, machine learning and process and/or task mining. As such, we are building skills to analyse data on the fly and execute real-time decisions.”

As Craft navigates transformative change as a company, Priscilla adds that strategic partnerships are essential for promoting growth and commercial success.

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“First and foremost, Craft believes that each one of its people is key to ensuring long-lasting relationships and partnerships in all of our markets, at all levels,” says Priscilla. “It is at our core to address problems and to connect our entire ecosystem in a neutral and problem-solving manner – whether they are freight forwarders, customs brokers, inland air and ocean carriers, insurance companies, terminals and all other players in the logistics chain – into a perspective where international logistics is made approachable and connected towards the prosperity of everyone involved.

That goes much beyond just our core business and that’s why today about 30% of our team is focused on relationships and sales alone. Another 25% is focused on product intelligence and relationships with providers and our core partners around the globe, which we call ‘product specialists’. Hence it is not by chance we control 90% of all business generated in each country we are located in, which differentiates us greatly. We take relationships personally and believe that they are the key to the sustained growth we continue to see year on year.”

To learn more about Craft, visit www.craftmulti.com 15

www.craftmulti.com

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