Meeting customers expectation and providing superior service play a major role in today’s competitive business world. Especially in Logistics Industries, where customers are increasingly demanding for better services. It compels the need for merchants to provide fast, accurate and quality shipping service. As the global trade continues to rise and the demand for high-quality logistics service increases, business leaders and merchants are establishing partnerships with highly professional logistic solution providers to improve their operational efficiency and customer experience.
WIIMA Logistics has come to the rescue for many businesses involved in logistic service needing to improve their technology, capabilities and overall logistic operation. Headquartered in Turku, Finland, the company offers freight trending services and full-service logistics coordination including budgeting for transportation and project logistics. Mr. Heikki Heinonen and Mr. Lauri Heiliö started WIIMA in 2010 in response to the lack of independent and open 4PL providers in the market. Mr. Heinonen, COB of WIIMA, recalls: “We saw a possibility in this sector and founded WIIMA. We had a clear vision of the service to be provided.” He adds, “The main thing till today is to provide a single point of contact logistic services that we would be very keen to buy ourselves.”
Today, the company handles the whole logistics process on customers’ behalf; it manages carriers, forwarding companies, airlines, and courier companies. With WIIMA, the existing contracts of the clients can be integrated with the company’s service. This brings measurable savings to the clients.
WIIMA Takes Care of the Full Logistics Operations
As a 4PL provider, WIIMA partners with a global network of logistics service providers. The company’s key strategy is to widen the network constantly and use the network openly and efficiently on behalf of the customers. The company links this network to the clients through one portal and enables the customers to login into different systems for booking freights from several different companies for various freights needs. The platform developed by WIIMA allows the customers to see a complete view of the shipments through one portal.
Through the platform, the company helps its customers to reduce their cost and time in logistic operations which can be measured with Key Performance Indicator (KPI). WIIMA takes over all the logistics operations from the customers which include shipping document creation, tendering of shipments, updating systems for logistics information, working as a message distributor for packing and collection details between material suppliers and freight forwarding companies. As the service and cooperation are open to customers, they can leverage most of the services provided by the company.
Embracing Flexible and Customer-Centric Work Culture
The company embraces a flexible and remote working culture. Mr. Heinonen says, “We encourage our employees to work remotely as long as they treat our clients well.” He adds, “Some of our logistics coordinators are located directly in customer facilities managing logistics operations.” This culture enables open and developing atmosphere with the customers.
Being neutral and staying non-asset based are promises to 4PL customers from WIIMA and these principles make it possible for the company to serve customers globally with a competitive edge. With a record of 90% very satisfied customers, WIIMA continues to develop and adjust its service according to customer needs.
The company’s growth rate has been tremendous. The Asia Pacific offices in Singapore, Malaysia, and China have formed an important part of the operations in WIIMA Logistics group. Ychelle Tan, Managing Director of WIIMA Logistics Asia Pacific, says, “The Singapore office will be in a big role concerning IT development. Singapore is an ‘IT-friendly hub’ for providing new logistics cloud-based logistics tools for our customers.”
Despite experiencing a downturn in 2014, especially in Singapore and Brazil, the company has managed to come back stronger to serve a wider pool of customers through its offshore offices.
Moving forward, the company is focused on its IT development. Automated freight tendering, cloud-based booking systems, project logistics management portal, RFID site management tools, are few development projects of the company. Short term goal of WIIMA is to build a winning logistics platform solution for customers. This benefits business into being scalable and bringing new growth from IT product sales. IT-development will play a big role in the future of the company as it is turning into a combination of logistics and IT-Development Company. The company has made a huge investment starting roughly a one million euro IT-development project in the group to continue development of digital tools. They also have plans to widen their own office network soon in Europe. Mr. Heinonen says, “The combination of skilled logistics professionals and an intelligent logistics platform is our future.”
WIIMA continues to focus on providing flexible, easily integrated solutions and complete logistic service for better logistics operations.