Episode Transcript
[00:00:03] Speaker A: Hello, I'm Mike King. Welcome to the Freight Buyers Club. This content today is supported by Ontegos Cloud freight forwarder, profitability specialist. And I'm over in Troisdorf, Germany for The opening of DHL's new Europe Innovation Center. And I'm delighted to say I'm joined today by Katya Busch, who's the Chief Commercial Officer for dhl and she heads up the Innovation and Customer Solutions division right across dhl. Katja, welcome to the Freight Buyers Club.
[00:00:33] Speaker B: Thanks for having me.
[00:00:34] Speaker A: So your new European Innovation center, it's called Epic.
Why it is Epic? Why epic? Why now? How does it support your customer solutions and how does it support the bottom line?
[00:00:48] Speaker B: So Epic is obviously the abbreviation for European Innovation center and yeah, I said it is Epic as well. So we decided here for this location 18 years ago already because it is close to Bonn, but it's a bit far away from Bonn. So we created really an environment where people can be very innovative.
And what we are doing here basically is we're delivering a platform, a platform to discuss with our customers as well as technology companies what is the next big thing in logistics. And the development is so fast. New technologies are evolving really on a monthly basis and we need to stay at the forefront of this thing to cater the needs of our employees as well as the needs of our customers.
[00:01:39] Speaker A: And can you give me an idea of the sort of investment that you put into technology and innovation and how you see that underpinning the future of the business?
[00:01:48] Speaker B: So we do not disclose numbers on what we are investing in our Innovation centers, but what I can say is that we are mainly here to make things faster, in a better quality and in a higher efficiency. So these are the three levers and that basically is worth any investment.
[00:02:12] Speaker A: Can you give me a view of what sort of technologies? We've talked through quite a few while we've been here at the center.
What sort of technologies your customers are going to see next, say in the next five years, what's going to change their businesses?
[00:02:27] Speaker B: I think robotics remains being a big, big topic to make life easier for the people in the warehouses. And this nurtured with AI will change things a lot. All the predictive stuff to have the right good at the right place at the right time. This will change dramatically the way the warehouses are working today. Yeah, I would basically see this as the next big thing.
[00:02:53] Speaker A: You, you have five divisions at dhl. I'll see if I can get this right. Forwarding, E Commerce, Post and parcel supply chain and Express. I can hire you yeah, yeah. Jobs please.
Can you give me an idea about how this technology or maybe we can look at digitalization. How.
What sort of digitalization standardization do you have that applies across the group, across all those different parts. The same applies with technology I guess as well.
[00:03:23] Speaker B: Yeah.
So all the work done by chatbots today, and not this kind of chatbot that repeats dump what you said, but really those kind of chatbots that are really helpful in customer service, this is something we apply across the group which makes life for our customers easier and for our employees. And in terms of technologies, it's very different. The needs of the divisions are very, very different. So main user of all what you can see here is supply chain.
[00:03:56] Speaker A: Ankatja. Just to finish, let's throw something out there. If you're looking 10 or 15 years, let's give us a brave forecast about a technology that mightn't be on people's radar, but that's on your radar.
[00:04:09] Speaker B: It is to solve the riddle of the last mile.
[00:04:12] Speaker A: The riddle of the last mile. Please tell us more.
[00:04:15] Speaker B: So the density of deliveries in Sydney gets higher and higher and governments try to get cars and delivery vans out of the city. So this is a trade off that needs to get solved. So more investments in electric fleets. But to bring the good physical to. To the customer is probably the next big thing.
[00:04:37] Speaker A: Are we going to ever see this sort of. We've seen the trailers for drones delivering direct into cities. Is that ever going to happen in Europe?
[00:04:43] Speaker B: No, no. The regulations are too tight. You will never get a permit to fly those drones. Actually what it can do, it can bring medicine in the outback in Australia or up to the Mount Kilimanjaro. These are cases, but these are niche things. They are not scalable and therefore not interesting for a logistics company.
[00:05:02] Speaker A: How about outside Europe? Are we going to see this in China? Maybe or somewhere else?
[00:05:06] Speaker B: Probably rules in China might be different.
So yeah, probably.
[00:05:11] Speaker A: Katya, thanks for joining me today on the Freight Buyers Club.
[00:05:14] Speaker B: Thank you very much.
