UTi Freight Forwarding Team,
As you know from Ed’s recent message, over the past few weeks, we have been working with our counterparts at DSV to share information about UTi’s business and culture, to assist them in formulating their preliminary integration plans. We can definitely tell you that they are excited to get started, and are excited to get to know our UTi people. Again and again, they have reinforced how important our people will be to the success of the combined company.
Unsurprisingly, they are focusing their initial integration efforts on the Forwarding business, as there is the most to be gained by completing the turnaround we started this year. As we have met and spoken with our counterparts at DSV, we have been struck by how much their culture reflects the changes we have been working toward this year… it’s all about empowerment and accountability.
DSV has great tools for measuring performance, and we can confirm that they are planning to implement their Cargowise platform (edi Enterprise) in the forwarding business as soon as is feasible. The plan for system implementation is still to be determined, but our larger countries currently on 1VIEW can expect to see this change the most quickly. A move to the Cargowise platform reflects a commitment to return to full job costing and a pure forwarding model, which we were working toward with the changes to 1VIEW. Those of you who have worked in a Cargowise environment in the past know that it is a good toolset and is easy to learn.
In the meantime, please remember that all communication with DSV must be under our agreed Rules of Engagement, as the deal is not yet closed, and as such, we continue to operate as competitors. All communications are routed through a careful legal review process to weed out any potentially problematic information. As such, please do not respond to any inquiries from DSV personnel unless they come from Lance D’Amico, Kristen Kravitz or ourselves. Please report any outreach that local DSV staff makes to you.
From both of us, Happy Holidays and Happy New Year! We look forward to a successful completion to the year and wish you all a relaxing holiday season.