Which region do you work in? Add an organisational chart for your company or region to illustrate you Regional Vice President and the managerial chain to you:
I presently work as a shipping agent within the European Region of GAC. Please find the attached pdf describing the local structure. The structure shows how many services and responsibilities are interwoven within the UK. Outside of this chart we liaise primarily with other GAC shipping agencies on mainland Europe such as GAC Netherlands, GAC Belgium, GAC Germany and GAC Norway. As many of our customers voyages are within the agency and European countries we have a free flow of information.
Choose three customers that your company does regular business with.
For these customers list:
The main products or services they use,
One or more GAC products or services that the customer could use, but currently don’t. Explain your reasoning.
Unigas: Unigas charter vessels to transport gas products throughout Europe. We are mainly concerned with the transport of Propane and Ethylene to Antwerp and Rotterdam. The main service we provide is shipping agency to facilitate the visit to port effectively. Currently Unigas do not take advantage of our Bunkering services (Taking on Fuel), this is a service we offer but unfortunately we not offer competitive prices to take advantage of our good customer relationship. The UK is more expensive than most of Europe for Bunkering. We also do not offer dry docking services to their fleet of vessels. This is a service we can offer but do not market it thoroughly in the UK. Offering these services allows us to give a full service to the customer.
Shell: As well as offering Shipping Agency services we act as Terminal Agent for Shell. This involves creating bills of lading (Inventory Receipts/Ownership Papers) for all vessels out of one of their ports. One possible service we could offer for the terminal is to act as husbandry agents for the vessels (Taking care of crew/supplies). While not hugely profitable we are already on site to act as Terminal Agents.
BP: Currently we often act as husbandry agents of BP’s Hound point Terminal for Oil Tankers. The Bills Of Lading are currently created by BP themselves however I believe we could act as Terminal Agents in this position for both their Hound Point and Grangemouth Terminals. This would allow us to have a much closer relationship with charterers and vessels we do not currently deal with. This would allows to show the quality of service we can offer in other areas.
Explain the importance of knowing GAC’s organisational structure and products and services to performing well in your role:
Having a working knowledge of GAC’s wider structure allows us to fulfil one of our most important roles which is to answer any question or pass to the person who can. This allows us to show how professional we can be.
If we know all the products and services available we can offer a greater range of services and destinations for those services. This means if we cannot secure the service at port we can help facilitate it for another agency office.
By being knowledgeable we can offer services not just locally but can pass to our colleagues in other parts of the world. We can therefore offer the complete service to our customer and show our professionalism.