Winner of the 2009 BRW ANZ Private Business Award for “Excellence in Customer Service”, Allied Express is proud to still be 100 per cent Australian and fiercely independent.
Managing director Michelle McDowell says it was the company’s ability to listen to customers and provide innovative and flexible transport solutions that gives it the edge.
“Our main goal is to be known as Australia’s favorite alternative transport provider,” McDowell says. “From a financial perspective, we expect to maintain year on year growth throughout a tough economic and also competitive period. Our target is to record annual turnover exceeding $200 million.”
McDowell maintains more than ever, companies need to listen to their customers and provide tailored solutions that address their true business challenges, rather than simply providing a rigid service.
“Instilling a culture of flexibility within the company is critical to this,” she says, “along with employing the right team to both strategise and execute solutions in collaboration with major clients.
Industry leading IT capabilities and the ability to provide flexible and integrated IT solutions is also a huge focus for Allied which has historically been at the forefront of IT development.
“Allied has the ability to write new business software or integrate our clients’ existing technology with ours seamlessly and quickly,” McDowell enthuses. "Again, it’s this flexibility and our ‘can do’ attitude that sets Allied apart from its competitors.
"Allied’s in-house IT Development team has just released a customised and ‘flexible’ Warehouse Management System for our 3PL clients, alternatively we can use our clients’ existing WMS. This combined with our fleet and technology finally matches flexibility with speed.”
“We have many exciting IT advances to announce in the short term future,” McDowell reveals. “Essentially, our focus is to align the tailored transport solution with the customers supply chain, which typically now extends into Asia.”
According to McDowell, Allied’s national distribution business will experience the greatest growth moving forward.
“Most of our clients are now seeking integrated solutions utilising all our services (Courier, Taxi-Truck, Road & Air distribution and 3PL) to provide a tailored national distribution model,” she explains.
“With the tough economic situation and tighter competition, companies are always looking for a smarter solution that addresses their corporate challenges, whilst creating a competitive advantage within their field.
“By combining the services that Allied provide, it’s easier for our clients to achieve economies of scale and this can quite often create a true competitive advantage over their competition through a more integrated and efficient supply chain.”
“In addition, an increasing challenge is the stretch of the supply chain to encompass a far greater proportion of offshore manufacturing than we have seen historically,” McDowell observes.
“Allied has strong alliances with like-minded international partners such as NYK Logistics, and can now service our clients from their offshore manufacturing plants right through to their customer’s doorstep locally.”
Michelle McDowell believes increased efficiency and service level maintenance (or enhancements) usually come through economies of scale, integrated and flexible solutions, and by understanding true business challenges.
“These points are the focus when Allied Express is presenting custom solutions to existing clients or new business opportunities, who are increasingly incorporating 3PL solutions,” she says.
“Given Allied’s national presence, our depot capacity within every single state and of course our integrated national distribution model of courier, taxi truck, air or road services, becoming a 3PL was a natural progression for us and a service that’s being increasingly popular within our existing client base."
While Allied Express acknowledges that Australia is heavily reliant on road transport, recognising and redressing the effect that this has on our environment is a strong component of its thinking.
“Currenty, Allied’s Environmental Policy focuses on making our carbon footprint neutral by 2010,” McDowell says. “We are doing this by planting as many trees as possible to offset the environments harmful emissions caused by our industry.”
“Over many years Allied Express has worked on many levels to reduce its impact on the environment,” she adds, “from small actions such recycling paper, and turning off computers, machinery and lights at night, to larger actions such as improving the productivity of our vehicles to reduce the number of kilometers travelled.
"Allied Express has also worked closely with its partners to ensure that we join in with their guidelines and environmental policies.”
Asked the recent supply chain achievement the company is most proud of, Michelle McDowel points to a solutions Allied Express provides to Holden Australia.
“Holden's South Australian manufacturing plant in Elizabeth is run on ‘just in time inventory management’,” McDowell explains.
“The plant requires parts from 31 suppliers be delivered precisely on time, within a 15 minute window or Holden will experience costly downtime.
“Allied Express provides a wide range of transport vehicles; predominately Semi Trailer’s to service 28 set runs, working around the clock daily. While the set runs don’t change, the volumes certainly do.
"Allied Express is given 48 hours notice on changes to the daily run volumes and is expected to change the operational plan daily to cater for the fluctuating volumes.
“Allied’s role goes beyond simply picking up and delivering what’s given to them by the suppliers. The service scope incorporates another level of quality control, as the number of items, the type of parts and even the colour of every item must be checked off against the manifest, with any discrepancies reported and rectified immediately.
“Allied’s pick-up and deliveries run on the tightest of schedules with a different semi-trailer expected to arrive at the manufacturing plant roughly every 11 minutes and making approximately 131 deliveries to Holden’s manufacturing plant each and every day.
“We have registered a 99.9 per cent window delivery compliance record, with not a single service failure reported and most importantly no costly production plant downtime.”