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Developing Supply Chain Domain Expertise with Mark Patel
78 Plays2 months ago
In this episode, Mark Patel, Group CEO at SCF Global, joins Host Brian Glick, CEO of Chain.io, to discuss:
- The advantages to forwarders staying focused in one vertical
- Building relationships and rapport with customers
- Cultural differences and advice for working in new cultures
- How supply chains have evolved from building in-house to buying solutions
- The significance of change management when implementing new systems
Mark joined SCF in 2017 as COO to enhance its consulting and solutions services offerings and grew the business across Asia and established SCF Global as a Premier Platinum Service Provider for WiseTech Global (CargoWise) in Asia Pacific.
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Transcript
Episode Introduction by Brian Glick
00:00:05
Speaker
Welcome to Supply Chain Connections. I'm Brian Glick, founder and CEO at Chain.io.
Featuring Mark Patel, Supply Chain Expert
00:00:10
Speaker
It's appropriate that I'm actually recording the introduction for this episode from an airport lounge because we're going to be talking to Mark Patel. Mark is an old friend of mine and a 35-year industry veteran, and he's the Group CEO for SCF Global.
Challenges of Cross-Cultural Communication
00:00:24
Speaker
A lot of our conversation on this episode is going to be focused on cross-cultural communication, working in different regions,
00:00:33
Speaker
and you know the real challenges that come from working across countries and cultures in supply chain. So I hope you enjoy the episode.
Mark Patel's Career Journey
00:00:49
Speaker
Mark, welcome to the show. Thanks, Brian. So why don't we start, ah introduce yourself a little and and tell us how he you got into the business. So I have a pretty varied background. Born in Africa,
00:01:03
Speaker
Got to the UK at age 10, couldn't speak a word of English, so I had to start fresh. I was working for General Electric and a buddy of mine, he had some issues. He was working for a company called MSAS headquarters in Bracknell, UK. So over my holidays, he said, look, why don't you come and help me out? And that's how I got into freight forwarding and logistics.
00:01:26
Speaker
and Ever since then, it's like you know I always say to people, it's like quicksand. Once you're in it, you can't get out because every day is different. It's something new, something challenging, and when you solve that problem for a customer, it just feels so good.
Career Development in Systems Accounting
00:01:44
Speaker
so you worked um and I've known you a long time and we can we can get into that a little bit, but you know you've worked across different size organizations and different regions and different kind of across everything so what's your favorite like what what do you what size and shape and flavor of things do you really love so you you know go back to the question about how i got in i got in as systems account so i'm a cpa and no one would know that with my comprehension numbers i got into systems accounting at the time i was helping ah guys to sort of test
00:02:20
Speaker
A freight forwarding system, believe it or not, green on black, based on S400, and without any freight forwarding knowledge, you know they asked me to test certain concepts. I tried that, and then as part of that, I was asked to go out and implement the system globally.
00:02:36
Speaker
and And one of the things you do as you go out to different regions, you meet different people, the challenges are the same. it's Whether it's US, Asia, Africa, in our industry, challenges are the same. But you learn a great deal. You learn a great deal about the culture, people,
00:02:52
Speaker
And then you sort of get involved into sort of hey problem solving and that's when you sort of really enjoy the part of solving and then you say well hang on you know this is just internal side now what's the other side and that the other side is the customers so back in the day i did free forwarding implementations then from that moved on to where has management implementations be vmi just in time and then the big thing around visibility so we did a lot of work around visibility and global solutions i think when we first met twenty odd years ago and then from there it sort of morphed into things but you know i've done operations finance commercial side of the business even HR and legal i would say the best the area that i most enjoy is providing solutions.
Problem-Solving in Supply Chain
00:03:45
Speaker
And providing solution, the reason I say that, it's, you know, you go somewhere, you see a problem. And I always like to try and fix things, you know, the typical male DNA, right? ah You see a problem, you want to fix it. So in our industry, obviously, over the many years, there's been a lot of issues, but whether it's integration systems, changing the landscape of technology across the last 15, 20 years.
00:04:12
Speaker
So yeah, I love solving problems and helping clients call it and do better. So let's loop back on the culture thing for a second. When you and I met, which I think is just about 20 years ago, almost, and, you know, I'd never done a project outside the US before. And we had to roll out Asia. yeah So that was certainly a learning curve for me, you know, and I think for a lot of Americans in particular,
00:04:40
Speaker
There's less exposure to people from other countries, just you know geography and what have you. But yeah kind of what's your advice for someone who is walking into a new culture or trying something in a new country where where they maybe they've never done
Advice on Cultural Differences in Business
00:04:56
Speaker
anything before? like how do you will be for the first timer. What's the simple advice? I think the simple advice, and you've ah obviously taken this on board very well, is listen, because as Westerners and growing up in the West, in the UK, we are taught from a very young age is to speak our mind. In Asia, quite often, even though you know you're right and you want to say something, it's just by your tongue.
00:05:23
Speaker
and listen, listen, and then right at the end, then you can make your point because I think that culturally, one, if you speak over someone, they lose face, right? So it's just to sit down and listen. And I have to say I've learned that lesson myself because I was, you know, a lot of the times I'm too eager to and in interrupt trying to make a point because you know you're right. And then someone pulled me aside and said, look, Mark, this is Asia. You know, just take a moment.
00:05:53
Speaker
griefe Breathe. It's not always easy for all of us to do
Evolution of Visibility in Supply Chain
00:05:59
Speaker
that. is it what so One of the other things you mentioned was visibility, and that's a tricky word in this business over the last, say, five to 10 years.
00:06:12
Speaker
because it's come to mean a couple of different things. But when you were talking about visibility, I think you were talking about a different thing than maybe some people who have really come up through this most current generation of technology think about. So what's visibility mean to you? Like, what did you mean by that word?
00:06:29
Speaker
Let me just take you back about twenty twenty five years right i mean i've been in the industry now thirty seven years right but back in the day and i'm talking about late nineties early two thousand s this is when. Visibility or freight forwarding companies three pls of the time if they provided visibility whether it's that po management order management or the end to end tracking on a ship that was deemed as a competitive advantage.
00:06:58
Speaker
because not many people had the right types of systems to try and get that information across. And then subsequently, I did a lot of work with Rosetta Net. I was a founding member of the Rosetta Net Logistics Council, which was trying to drive process centric pips through systems and customs and so you had end to end view of something and then from my side visibility is this right in supply chain you expect something to go right ninety nine percent of the time as a senior executive i only want to know about the one percent when something goes
Proactive Supply Chain Management
00:07:34
Speaker
wrong.
00:07:35
Speaker
As a service provider, you need to capture 100% of the information so that just on the off chance that 1% goes wrong. I know, you know, there's an escalation process and then you can take remedial action.
00:07:51
Speaker
i'll Give me an example if you look at the source canal issue couple of years ago was it last year eighteen months ago i think you know many people those people that had the right exception management protocols in place they were able to sort of navigate round.
00:08:07
Speaker
their shipment requirements, where the shipment went to an extent where they did sort of the air freighted shipments in a certain place and then from there they did ocean freight. So you're able to sort of react or rather proactively take action on potential challenges in the supply chain. And that's what you want from a visibility perspective. Yeah, I think that's an an important issue is that visibility in the absence of doing something about it makes for a really nice dot on the map. Right. Right. It's meaningless. Yeah. Because you expect, you expect things are going to go right. It's just the exception. So I think you as a, as a shipper, not you as a shipper, but the person who's a shipper certainly has that expectation. Right. And part of the reason you pay a freight forwarder,
00:09:01
Speaker
is to make all of the noise go away, right? Just make my shipment show up on time, right? And at the cost that I expected to pay for it. You spend a lot of your time working with forwarders where they always have.
Integration of New Technologies
00:09:14
Speaker
kind of what's evolved in, you know, the last say 10, 15 years of how forwarders are approaching technology and how they're thinking about meeting those needs that the shippers have. Well, I think few things have happened. Number one, technology has obviously changed in the last 15 years. You've got new systems come on the market, new sort of endto end to end ERP systems that sort of speak to or work well within the freight forwarding and logistics domain.
00:09:45
Speaker
The bigger guys have embraced those systems. More importantly, they've actually had to navigate around the change management system, internal change management issues on visibility it's and not visibibility on systems ERPLO. The other bigger area I think that's happened in the last 15 years, more and more freight forward is of gravity towards buy, not build.
00:10:11
Speaker
and A lot of that has stemmed from three or four major factors. and and Number one, not being able to keep up with technology. so You buy a stack of servers, you've got a set of software, you put that in there before you know it. Technology is enhanced.
00:10:28
Speaker
then not being able to attract the right people. And what's happened there is that within the industry, as more and more other parts of other industries require technology, tech-centric individuals, they're paying more. You're not being able to so that you're not able to attract good technology people.
00:10:49
Speaker
Thirdly and i think this is this is probably one of the most important thing i think that's happening in the industry for us and it's the requirement of the end customer has changed. right So no one you earlier you mentioned that we provide services to the ship a community as three pls i think what's happened in the last fifteen years more and more.
00:11:13
Speaker
freight forwarders are worried about their end clients and pushing that as in their customer's customer rather than the freight forward, rather than the shipper, right? So if you're a HP and we're doing some shipment for HP, you're not worried about getting something delivered for HP, but you're worried about getting that to the end client of HP and making that customer successful, so therefore HP is successful, just as an ex example.
Importance of Data Integration
00:11:41
Speaker
you know i think That's a really important point. you know I think we should spend maybe a minute on that. like What does that mean? like like How does that change the thinking at a forward? Well, I think the thinking from the folder is number one, if you want to stay competitive and if you want to keep business as a folder, you start thinking differently. The conventional way of doing business is say, right, I've got my rates. I've got low rates for this particular trade lane. I'm going to get the business. No, it's not so much just the rates and good service that sort of wins your business.
00:12:15
Speaker
but you need a whole package what is it that you doing that your competition isn't doing for your big customers and a lot of that means is how fast you give the ship and the end clients data information how fast you integrate with their systems and importantly what happens is if you have facility whereby you're able to integrate with their systems seamlessly then likely to then be in a position to help their end clients, rather than having to worry about, hey, where's my shipment in the supply chain? Am I going to achieve my orders, orders target this year, etc. It's a given that information is going to come with the physical activity that takes place with it.
00:13:03
Speaker
so you've mentioned HP, and I know that in your background, you know you especially when you're at MSAS, you're very vertical specific right in cell phones in the 90s and electronics and the things that have grown from that.
00:13:19
Speaker
I come from a different vertical, from wearing apparel, which has obviously very, very different demands, right? Those are, with the exception of maybe pharmaceutical, I have trouble thinking of two different things that both go into retail's location that have different supply chains than cell phones and t-shirts, right? What advantages can a forwarder bring if they do stay focused on a vertical?
00:13:40
Speaker
knowledge base, number one, sort of deep domain experience. Number two, ability to navigate volatile situations, because you know the product, you know what's going on in the market. Number three, in terms of handling. Now, you know, we did a lot of work in the farming industry, for instance.
00:13:59
Speaker
As you know, certain farming industries, whether it's medical kits or something else, requires a different type of handling, the white glove handling. right Some of that product needs to be distributed within a certain temperature controlled environment. So these type of skill sets, you learn these skill sets when you sort of home in on a specific industrial vertical.
00:14:21
Speaker
right Retail, for instance, when you do your retail supply chain, the first and the biggest question you would have on your retail supply chain on a delivery, is that individual going to be available to receive your delivery? If it's not, then what's plan B? What's plan C? What happens if there's a flood or the road is sort of blocked by a tree falling on the road?
00:14:44
Speaker
so All of these things, if you are a specialist in a certain area, you'd know you would have come across those challenges and therefore you've taken remedial actions in the past and therefore you've got a plan B, so that your end customer is always one captive form and secondly, at least you're trying your best to get the freight or the product to them.
Change Management During System Rollouts
00:15:04
Speaker
You mentioned that when we're rolling out a new system.
00:15:08
Speaker
change management. That's scary, scary words. So as I've always liked to say, the computers do exactly what we tell them to. The rest of it is hard. When you start engaging on a new global rollout, as a consultant who's been brought in to make a system, what are some of the things that you see that maybe are going to tell you if the change management is either going to be easy or hard?
00:15:30
Speaker
but if a little you know You and I have been in rooms doing this together, so I can see the look in your eyes when it happens, but kind ofre like what are the little telltale signs that that executives should be looking for to see if they're ready for change? Based on our experience of having done this for so many years, we have a cheat sheet of risks and risk for mitigation. and Number one on the risk for a transition to a new yeah ERP system is change management.
00:15:59
Speaker
And that's the first thing and how do you mitigate that now in an organization you have people that been doing the same job for twenty years fifteen twenty years they've been using the same system they know the process how do you get them to change the way they do things differently because now you have a different system.
00:16:21
Speaker
So the process needs to change. So one of the analogies I use is, and actually back in the day, I used to do this in person. So I used to take the old phone. Do you remember the phone where you used to use some dial? Number nine would go all the way down and you had to wait and then dial this. And I said, look, this is what you're using now. And the technology you have now is these things, which is a smartphone. OK, now.
00:16:49
Speaker
You decide whether this works for you or the speed with which you can dial a number on your smartphone and see a person on the other side, what would you prefer? and Ah, the penny drops. Similarly, with sort of change management of their systems, you say, look, you're working on green on black.
00:17:10
Speaker
And we're going to move you to a super-duper system that's going to do all these things for you. You don't have to type out airway bills anymore. It's going to be there. You can send them by email. You can do your clearances and all of these things. But the biggest thing for change management starts with management at the top. And it's the narrative they portray to the staff on why they're changing the system.
00:17:38
Speaker
Number one, and the biggest issue people have is the fear of potentially losing their job because something new, better, faster is coming in. And this is where management need to explain to them. We're going to move to a new system.
00:17:57
Speaker
It would actually allow you to you know get a breather but more importantly rather than you something in a way bills and information to create shipments you can now spend more time serving our customer and i think that's where if you have the right narrative that people understand that because everyone likes talking on the phone to the client. right You know, if you establish that rapport, they want to talk to them, they'd rather be talking to their client and understanding what the issues are and fix them than try and thump information into an old system. So I have never heard in my career, and I'm sure somebody's going to immediately find a counterpoint to this, but it's not common at least, that I've seen a company, a forwarder, implement a new system, and then 60 days later let 30% of their staff go.
00:18:46
Speaker
like it's not It's never how it works. you find and But every time we walk in the room, that fear is there. It is there. Absolutely. and It's management's job to try and you know try and compete things down. In fact, the easiest way to get around that is say, look, we'll be able to do more shipments without hiring extra people, and that's it. They don't need to try and sugarcoat anything on that front. and I think There are times when what happens is people who are doing the ah ROI for a new system, their, what you call it, their remit is to say, right, if we put a new system in, what's a cost saving?
00:19:30
Speaker
So immediately they're looking at the downside. What they should be doing is if we put a new system in, how can we better serve our clients? How can we grow our business? How can we do more with the same amount of FTEs? And that's the narrative that should be put out there rather than, hey, we put this system in, it's going to save us 50 people here, 10 people here. And so it's just a headcount game and it shouldn't be a headcount game. It's always a little interesting to me, again, coming from the US, this idea, one of the great learnings I had doing these rollouts, you know, in other countries, and then particularly in Asia, actually, I was able to bring back to the US, which was
00:20:14
Speaker
there's this very, especially if people say in their forties and fifties now who kind of grew up listening to, you know, Jack Welsh and GE and all of that of the, you'll put in the new system because you get paid on Friday and I told you to write. And that's the chain. And that's some of the change management is I'm your boss. And I said, we're doing this and we're doing it. And that's the end of it. Right. And,
00:20:38
Speaker
You know, I may have shared this story on the podcast before, but I remember rolling out a ah large global system and we rolled out all these different countries and we and we got to Italy and we walked in and it was the last country to go. And we said, all right, here you're doing this. And they went.
00:20:52
Speaker
No, we're not. Why don't we just go get a coffee instead? And then it was like five years later they went live, right? Because we didn't do the change management. Well, we did the change management like Americans, but even coming back into the U S or into the UK or into, you know, places that do have a little bit more of a command and control structure, you still learn that there is huge value in putting in the time to get people excited about something instead of just telling them to do it. Right. And that.
Building Strong Customer Relationships
00:21:20
Speaker
It's very frustrating when you have a project planned and you know the salesperson has sold your boss that, oh yeah, this thing's going to be implemented in six months. You're like, okay, I need to spend six months on change management, and then we can do the six months implementation. Right. And you know something, Brian, what people forget is different freight forwarding different point forwarders are organized differently in terms of how they correspond or communicate with the customer. And in Asia, in many cases, you either have a customer service department that's solely responsible for talking to the client,
00:21:55
Speaker
or in some cases you have the operations department that does a customer service activity and one of the things i found out is how deeply connected the operations people were to the customer so if something went wrong they would just pick up the phone and talk to them and it was solved.
00:22:16
Speaker
hi It wasn't a case of a salesman trying to basically trying to give him a story as to why something's gone wrong. and A lot of that is because of the relationship and the rapport that's developed over time with these ops people that have been there several years. and I always say the value of these ops people, you can't buy it. They've got that experience of what to do outside all of a sudden when the rain hits the ground and your car goes outside. They've already got that covered. what to do when you know there's a strike somewhere. They've got ideas, they can talk to the client, and in some ways, they may ease the fears of the client because they have that connection with them. And they can do the opposite, and I've seen it, where they you know they they become... I remember we had someone, at one of the companies I worked with in our in our Chicago office who had a you know very, very deep relationship with ah the import specialist at the customer.
00:23:15
Speaker
And she would, you know, they would talk like three or four times a day because all she did was handle their freight and she was effectively embedded on their team. but Even though she was in our office and we were making some changes. And, you know, she was just talking to her friend who happened to be the customer. Oh, this isn't going to work very well. And they're making me use this new system.
00:23:37
Speaker
and everything's slower because I have to learn this new thing, right? And then we get a call from the executive because that had moved in the wrong direction because we hadn't done the change management, right? And it wasn't the fault of the person at the desk level who was honestly just, you know, she would talk to the customer more times a day than she would talk to the person at the desk next to her, yeah right? And so, you know, that was on us for being naive and not understanding that we needed to, A, make her feel better about the change, and B, coach her on how we were going to talk about the change with our customers. There's this natural J-curve when you implement a system where you do get less efficient for a while and there's ways to manage that.
Future of the Industry: Integration and Technology
00:24:21
Speaker
Then get that excitement going, using the system. Yeah. We're running up towards time here, but I'm curious a little bit, what are you excited about for the future?
00:24:35
Speaker
outside of family in the industry. Look, I think there are several things that are going on in the industry that excites me. Obviously, the great work that you guys are doing. Thank you. and This is not trying to blow smoke into you guys, but I think what Chain does, you know that's been a requirement for a long time. and It's like you guys are the 4PL of the integration world.
00:25:00
Speaker
And what I mean by that is what you do is the work you do allows the freight forwarders or the shippers or anyone else ah to concentrate on their core, number one. So that's the first thing. Secondly, allows gives them the flexibility to change players without having to worry about the changes in maps and everything else because you guys got that covered.
00:25:23
Speaker
Obviously it reduces cost overall cost of ownership the biggest around trying to hire technology good tech people in order to sort of navigate interfaces and changing face of how you interface with different people you don't need to worry about that the other thing you know this i don't think people put enough emphasis on.
00:25:49
Speaker
recruiting people, training them, and making sure they provide that right service, and especially when it comes to tech people. and It's not something you just bring someone from the university, put them in there, they might have got the best grades out, and they're going to be a technology expert. It doesn't work like that because you need to understand the industry.
00:26:07
Speaker
the deep domain expertise you guys have and then you supplement that with your technology expertise and that's what it brings to the table, which is similar to what we do from our 4PL side to the shippers because we come from the industry, right? So as far as the principle is concerned, they only come to you. Mr. Chain, you guys need to solve our problems. All of these are interfaces. You help me solve them and you do that. And and I think that's important Well, thank you. And I am flattered and and certainly appreciative of the compliment.
SCF Global's Dual Focus
00:26:41
Speaker
Why don't we take it out with, tell us a little bit more about what SCF does and where we can find you guys.
00:26:48
Speaker
So we have two sides of business. On one side, we're systems integration folks and consultants. Predominantly, we help clients go live on yeah ERP systems and brickboarding, predominantly cargo-wise in that space, but not limited to cargo-wise. So whether it's cargo-wise, WMSs, et cetera. And that's on one side of the business. On the other side of the business, we're a 4PL. So always in 4PL, we work with the likes of Schneider, HP, 3M, to name a few.
00:27:18
Speaker
But I always say we're in a unique position because we see the challenges that freight forwarders have in serving the shippers. Similarly, we see on the flip side as a 4PL the challenges shippers have.
00:27:33
Speaker
on trying to work with freight forwarders and we try to sort of be that conduit that brings technology, different way of doing things, different thinking, if you like, into their supply chain needs. Awesome. And we'll make sure to get links to the website and your profiles and everything in this show notes. Mark, it's been a pleasure having you on and obviously you and I have known each other a very long time. It's always always great to have the opportunity to chat.
00:27:59
Speaker
Always, always, likewise. Good talk. Thanks, Brian.
Conclusion and Chain.io Updates
00:28:06
Speaker
And a huge thanks to Mark for sharing all of that insight. As you can tell, Mark and I have known each other for a very long time. And one of the things I really appreciate about this industry is the ability to have friends all over the world. So I hope you enjoyed the episode. Make sure you're checking out both s SCF, which we'll have some links to, as well as the Chain.io blog and LinkedIn.
00:28:25
Speaker
I've had some really exciting announcements lately around data analytics and the supporting infrastructure that you need to really take on AI over the next 10 years, especially in relation to our recent connections that we've added for Snowflake. So if you're interested in that, make sure to reach out to us and look forward to speaking next time on Supply Chain Connections.