The Red Hat Logistics Team Left to Right: Matt Morelock, Bryan Nelson, Steve Shaffer, Rick Pate, Kathy Mauer
By Amanda Armendariz
AND THE AWARD GOES TO….. PARCEL and PARCEL Forum were proud to present Red Hat, Inc. with our first-ever Game Changer of the Year Award at our conference in October. Here’s why Red Hat stood out from the rest.
R
ed Hat, located in Raleigh, North Carolina, certainly set the bar high when PARCEL and PARCEL Forum selected its logistics team as the recipients of our first-ever Game Changer of the Year award at our conference in October of 2015. Founded in 1993, Red Hat is the world’s leading provider of open source software solutions, using a community-powered approach to reliable and high-performing cloud, Linux, middleware, storage and virtualization technologies. Red Hat prides itself on creating relevant, innovative technologies that liberate resources for growth and prepare customers for the future of IT. We at PARCEL Forum received several qualified submissions, and all of them demonstrated, on many levels, a commitment to optimizing their logistics processes in a way that truly changed their organization’s “game.” But Red Hat’s submission stood out to the PARCEL Forum Advisory Board, which selected the winner. The Advisors sensed that those involved in their project had not just a
18
MARCH-APRIL 2016 | www.PARCELindustry.com
desire to streamline their processes for efficiency’s sake, but that they truly wanted to change the way their organization both saw and invested in their logistics process. THE PROBLEM Like many companies, the most pressing problem for Red Hat was how to reduce their shipping spend, without affecting customer service — a dilemma that I’m sure resonates with many of our readers! Red Hat was experiencing significant growth; from the end of fiscal year 2011 until the end of fiscal year 2015, Red Hat’s number of employees more than doubled, going from 3,700 to 7,500. During that same time period, revenues grew from $909 million to $1.8 billion. That kind of growth within an organization often comes with excitement, innovation — and a new set of challenges. The most pressing challenge that needed to be addressed was the fact that the “shipping” department was understaffed and used antiquated means of processing ship requests, which naturally led
to inefficiencies and over spending. The team had to find a better way to move an increasing number of packages, without sacrificing customer satisfaction. THE INNOVATORS The two team members who spearheaded this project were Rick Pate, Manager, Global Logistics Operations and Steve Shaffer, Project Manager. THE SOLUTION The shipping and receiving department was rebranded as the logistics department in 2013. The change wasn’t just limited to a new name; the way team members conducted business began to change, as well. The most noticeable shift was that the team went from being merely reactionary to becoming strategic and proactive. No longer content to just solve problems after they appeared, the logistics team sought out solutions to potential roadblocks before they even had a chance to occur. This was something that really resonated with Pate. “When I first came to Red Hat from FedEx, I noticed that our team