The year 2017 was a year of changes in the transportation industry. With the aim providing of value, we have seen many carriers and freight forwarder acquisitions consummated, start-up technology companies competing for the attention of cargo owners and intermediaries, the US trucking industry gearing up for ELD and changes in engaging with customs and trade parties.
These activities have created disruption to the industry’s structure, the conduct of the participants, and their performance. As a result of the above, we saw degradation in all aspects of service levels.
Solvay is hopeful this will be temporary and will see improvements 2018. We would like to see improvements in all aspects of the order to cash process, namely contracting, customer service, operations execution, and invoicing.
In 2018 we believe the new platforms promoting digitization will be enablers in all aspects of the underlying processes. In 2018, Solvay will be adapting to digitization, with the aim of streamlining processes and facilitating performance improvements. We will continue with our commitment to sustainability initiatives.
Our focus will be on environmental, societal and financial sustainability. We will be looking to our industry constituents and our service providers to cooperate and reciprocate with initiatives supporting sustainability.
In general, we believe that 2018 will be setting the stage for new models of operating within our networks. We think these new initiatives will be setting the standards for the industry for the next decade or so.