Driven to deliver

Loyalty and experience are valued by clients; just ask Antje Lochmann, Managing Director of GEODIS Freight Forwarding and Contract Logistics Germany.

“We have some startup customers and, for them, being in a room with people who have celebrated 10, 20, even 30 years with a company is especially impressive,” she tells The CEO Magazine.

One particular instance she recalls is a conversation with a person charged with deciding on a global shipment provider.

“He said to us how nice it was to sit with so many ‘dinosaurs’ in the room,” she says with a laugh. “When we asked him what he meant, he explained that because we have been with the company for so long, we know everything about the business.”

The person in question had succeeded in using the term dinosaur as a compliment. While the conversation is now one that Lochmann and her colleagues joke about, it does serve as a reminder of the benefits of talent retention to businesses.

“Churn isn’t good for any business,” she says. “We need to retain our people. There will always be churn, but what is crucial is that the key people stay.”

The inside track

Lochmann herself is one of those important people. She joined GEODIS in 2011 after nearly a decade at TFG Transfracht. Initially hired for an inside sales team lead role, she quickly impressed, working her way into the Director, National Sales & Marketing position in 2017.

The following year, she was promoted to Managing Director for Freight Forwarding Germany before being appointed Managing Director of Freight Forwarding and Contract Logistics Germany in 2021.

She’s one of the first sales leaders to progress to an executive function in the company.

Lochmann says her experience across the business has given her an advantage in terms of running the German operations.

“The sales department is a great place to grow because you have to support customers,” she says. “Also, having started from the bottom, I know how hard you need to work and what it’s like for people working across all layers of the business.”

A ‘glocal’ approach

Along with keeping its own long-term talent, Lochmann says that GEODIS has low churn on the client side, too. This is thanks to its ‘glocal’ approach to doing business, whereby it leverages its global network and experience to provide localized solutions.

“When we have a customer at GEODIS, they stay,” she explains. “At every level and for every customer, there is a dedicated point of contact.

“We learned early on that you can’t rely on just one person to be responsible and in contact with the customer. They need to have different contacts, whether in operations or sales.”

This customer-centricity is what sets GEODIS apart in the crowded logistics space. Lochmann adds that the company makes it a priority to have regular meetings with customers to ensure their needs are understood and met, and to anticipate any market changes.

“Price matters, but it’s not the only factor,” she explains. “We are loyal to our customers and they are loyal to us.”

Beyond simply fulfilling what the customer requests, Lochmann’s teams offer alternatives and market insights to ensure customers have a strategic choice, not just a transactional choice – and to that end, whenever there is an issue, the team is not afraid to work with customers to overcome them.

Prioritizing sustainability

Originally founded in 1904 and shaped over the years by various mergers, GEODIS is fully owned by the SNCF Group, France’s state-owned railway company. Lochmann says it uses its extensive international network to support local and global needs, creating custom solutions that are best for its customers.

As well as a strategic focus on building end-to-end solutions across the full supply chain, sustainability is a core priority. The company is creating road maps to improve sustainability in every country it operates in.

“Customers are asking for this and we are becoming creative to ensure that we have solutions for them,” Lochmann says.

Ways in which it is doing so include investing in tools like Climate Fresk to teach employees – and even customers – about climate change or proposing freight solutions that involve sustainable fuels.

Other investments on the table include GEODIS GPT, an internal generative AI tool that draws only from the GEODIS cloud. Lochmann predicts that sooner rather than later, AI will power a fully automated tracking system that offers clients visibility and transparency across the entire shipment of their goods.

With a blend of extensive industry experience and a forward-thinking mindset, Lochmann is helping shape GEODIS into the logistics partner of choice for tomorrow’s challenges.