Our positioning in transport and logistics
As for all our economic sectors, our support focuses on the management of the company in the sense of the
finance,
treasury,
management control or
accounting function.
Our privileged interlocutors are financial directors, performance directors as well as general management for ETIs or sometimes IT departments in charge of ERP projects or solutions in general.
Our positioning in the "Transport & Logistics" sector is based on a good knowledge of the sector and its specificities. In fact, to simplify, there are two areas of sector expertise that strengthen our positioning.
Firstly, maintenance is an inseparable activity from the sector and this activity has an inescapable impact on a good number of missions with a management vocation.
Secondly, invoicing and its associated process are often specific. Here again, the experience of these specificities reinforces our competence in the sector.
*
Our clients are essentially large corporations or ETIs. Here again, the sector has a specificity. Over the last few years, the sector has become more concentrated and we have seen many small and medium-sized players join forces with large groups. Nevertheless, a good number of players, despite their change of shareholders, maintain a relatively autonomous operation within the groups with ETI issues.
Our clients are players in maritime, river, road and rail transport, and of course in combined transport. They are also logisticians or mixed actors.
Our team is led by two dedicated partners.
Our support is generally "tailor-made", particularly with regard to the specificities of the sector itself.
Our experiences
Strategy & organization
In terms of
strategic missions, we have carried out strategic plans and related business plans. We have challenged business plans. In addition, we have assisted a group in identifying acquisition targets in Europe.
Organizational missions deal with the review of organizational charts or the redesign of processes. They aim at reorganizing and securing the company as well as implementing new tools. These so-called "process" missions (for instance revisions of invoicing circuits or missions about customer knowledge) include sometimes a search for administrative productivity improvement.
A specificity of the sector is the significant number of small and medium-sized companies. In this context, the organization missions very often pursue several objectives: a better knowledge by the customer of its own functioning until a complete reengineering of its functioning.
PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENT
These missions aim at improving management efficiency in general and financial efficiency in particular.
The missions to
revise reporting (from the masterplan to the challenge of the dashboards already in place) are significant within this economic sector, probably partially justified by the integration of ETIs into large groups. The integration of more "physical" and not exclusively financial data characterizes the missions of Akeance Consulting.
Akeance Consulting also conducts billing optimization missions (
in the form of process missions, see above) but also in the form of task forces that help reduce customer outstanding.
In a manner perhaps less specific to the "Transport & Logistics" sector,
the reduction of the time required to issue monthly or quarterly accounts is the subject of Akeance Consulting missions, in the same way as the implementation of
cash flow forecasts and the
implementation of cash pools.
The missions that accompany the
management control departments obviously concern a better knowledge / better
control of the margin, one of the difficulties often being the apprehension of multi-modal transport. Here again, the specificity of the sector led Akeance Consulting to conduct a study of the costs of empty containers for a large maritime transport group or to identify truck fleets that consume too much fuel.
Transformation management
Managing the transformation itself consists in
monitoring organizational projects (resulting from an internal desire or following an integration or outsourcing of activities) or
information system projects. We have a recognized know-how in
project management in both areas, based on proven methods and tools.
The management of the transformation of the organization is directly related to the target organization. This is the subject of Akeance Consulting's missions when two ETIs or an ETI within a group are integrated.
The sector is very demanding in terms of transformation through IT solutions, whether it be ERP, software packages or information system tools in general such as dematerialization solutions, electronic document management, BI solutions, master data management solutions. Our missions cover the analysis,
choice and
implementation of information systems and transversal solutions. Our knowledge of the business and associated IT solutions facilitates dialogue with teams to meet their needs. Our offer is completed by a
change management part.
Some convictions
THE ACTIVITY OF A CARRIER IS ALWAYS MORE COMPLICATED THAN EXPECTED ...
Indeed, the transport itself is never as basic as the quick description of the company. Indeed, multi-modal transport is very often an integral part of the activity. In the same way, a partial, minor, secondary activity of logistics is often present in a good number of transport actors, without counting secondary activities of storage itself. This has the effect of complicating management control as much as the ERP itself, particularly in its parameterization or its account plan.
COMPLEX PLAYERS FOR OFTEN SMALL TEAMS
Historically, this sector has suffered from a lack of value creation. One of the consequences is still visible today is the strict management of management teams and their level of administrative productivity. During the projects that Akeance Consulting conducts with these "Transport & Logistics" players, the frequent observation is the lack of internal resources to be regular and available interlocutors.
