Panalpina upgrades its transport management system in Germany

Jun 13, 2017: The Swiss logistics services company Panalpina had integrated new transportation management system in different business units throughout Germany. This is part of the companies continued efforts to upgrade its operational IT platform. Ocean Freight is currently the prime focus and will be followed by Air Freight.

It is interesting to note that Germany is already handling the highest number of transactions on the new platform. The new transport management system will secure significant operational benefits which will lessen the impact of current market volatilities and corresponding margin pressure.

Before the actual roll out in Germany, a major release upgrade was installed, that brought significant improvements and new functionalities to the system. As planned, Panalpina went live with its new transportation management system at the end of May.

“With the go-live and phased deployment of our new transportation management system in Germany, we have successfully demonstrated the system’s ability to scale-up to higher volumes and are now tackling larger countries with more confidence. To put things into perspective: Panalpina Germany is our third biggest organisation in terms of shipment transactions globally. The successful roll-out in Germany will further confirm the system’s capabilities. Germany is now the fifth country using our new operating platform, after Switzerland, Singapore, Italy and Canada, where the system has already been fully implemented,” says Alain Dejalle, chief transformation officer at Panalpina.

Once the roll-out in Germany is completed, about 30 percent of all transactions will be handled on the new platform. The preparations for deployment in the next big country, the US, are well advanced and its roll-out will be another important milestone in this project.

“Ensuring business continuity for our customers is always the top priority when we roll out the new system in a country. I am happy to report there have been no disruptions or negative impacts on our customers. We’ve made great progress and our teams have done a tremendous job,” explains Dominik Wiesler, Panalpina’s country manager for Germany.

During the ramp-up, Germany will focus on having all Ocean Freight transactions handled on the new system by July and all Air Freight transactions by October, at the latest.

Panalpina’s CEO Stefan Karlen says: “I am very pleased with the successful roll-out in Germany. This is an important milestone in our operations transformation program and validates both the scalability and robustness of our approach.

While we see continuous strong volumes, we are still facing margin erosion, as previously communicated. As a result, we expect these market challenges to adversely impact our profitability levels and we anticipate lower results for the first half of the year, compared to the same period last year,” adds Karlen.