Safe Line Group Enterprises LLC — SME Case Study (UAE)

Safe Line Group Enterprises LLC Chris Jones

Figure 6: The Safe Line Group Logo Safe Line Group Enterprise LLC is among prime international freight service providers, which provide logistics and supply chain solutions by road, sea, and air transportation all over the world. The company is based on an extremely strategic location in Nad Al Hamar, Dubai, Chris Jones Safe Line Group Enterprises United Arab Emirates and was established 17 years ago.

Safe Line Group has a dedicated core team consisting of trained experts who understand the needs of clients and have personalized solutions for them. It has an IATA trained and experienced operations staff and a dedicated service team to handle sensitive and valued cargo. The company moves cargo to North America, Africa, and the Far East and vice versa. The company offers insurance coverage, customs inspections, warehouses inside the areas that are duty free, and land transportation through road to the Middle Eastern and GCC countries to every transit cargo.

Safe Line Group didn’t begin from the void, nor was it established for the sole purpose of making money or copying previous formats of others, but it has been the creative idea that searches for distinction and success, being the sole yet well-determined objective and tool for solving the set of the business issues and the difficulties faced by a lot of people. Its mission is to become the highly preferred supply chain logistics enterprise implementation service as well as innovatives for creating sustainable growth for the society as well as business.

Vision Statement Safe Line Group positions itself as the modern logistics services provider that is innovatively managing the international flows of cargo. It is overlooked for being the best agent in the logistics industry, by providing the optimal solutions as well as making sure timely and fast communication with clients.

ACC & FINANCE EXECUTIVE ADMIN EXECUTIVE HR EXECUTIVE SECURITY OFFICERS SECURITY EXECUTIVES SECURITY SUPERVISORS SENIOR OPERATIONS MANAGER ADMIN/ FINANCE/ HR HEAD EXECUTIVE CHAIRMAN MANAGING DIRECTOR OPERATIONS MANAGER CLERKS DiSPATCHERS/ DRIVERS SECURITY GUARDS Figure 7: The Organizational Structure of Safe Line

Organizational Structure

Safe Line Group has a functional organizational structure, as it is structured by the grouping of workers in sections that are based on their similarity of activities, skills, and tasks. Since Safe Line Group is a mid-sized company, the functional organizational structure suits the company perfectly. The company has implemented the functional organizational structure in order to accomplish top performance within its logistics services of small and big cargo, which require a greater degree of specialization.

One department head manages the entire department that consists of grouped competences and tasks.

Using the functional organizational structure, the Safe Line Group begins with the positions having greatest degrees of responsibility at the top and then moves downwards from there. The workers are organized as per their corresponding function and specific skills inside the company. Every separate department within the company is managed independently. This organizational structure enables the workers to concentrate on their specific roles and encourages specialization within the company. It helps the departments and teams to feel self-determined. (Usmani, 2020)

During the beginning of 2020, the global outbreak of COVID-19 was not foreseen, and has impacted almost every industry in a negative way. The logistics industry has likewise found itself within the middle of this chaos.

The Safe Line Group has been through this pandemic and had to face various challenges. Due to lower fairs in a number of nations, thousands of employees were trapped at seas having contracts expired and also far away from families. Additionally, due to the closure of the sea ports, there has been a lot of difficulty for the company to fulfill their clients’ needs. The containers that were full of the merchandise were awaiting the unclear date and time of normalization of the international traffic at both sea and airports. Also, there was a decrease in the demand of cargo services by the clients, as they were avoiding any such things that would increase the chances of spreading COVID-19. There were rules on every big port around the world, which set the rules related to the fourteen-day quarantine for tankers that were arriving at the ports. Since, the sea ports were creating a lot of issues for the Safe Line Group, in conducting its operations successfully; it had to depend entirely on air transport.

It had to divert its operations mainly on air transport, which provided a great relief. For this purpose, it had to change strategies and operations. The company ensured its clients that it is using precautionary measures in its operations in order to provide safe services.

Products/

Figure 8: A promotional photo of Safe Line Group The Safe Line Group provides a number of services.

Primarily, the company provides freighting services through land, sea, and air for catering every freight requirement of its clients. Safe Line Group likewise offers its clients a specialized service related to segregation of shipment, packing, repacking etc. The company supplies every good ordered by clients and quality guaranteed commodities through importing or specifically produced by genuine manufacturers or from local markets. In addition, the company has a range of brand new Toyota cars, along with the used cars having appropriate specifications and competitive prices. The company has adequate variety of the trucking services inside the United Arab Emirates and likewise transportation and per-clearance services to other Middle Eastern countries at reasonable rates.

Safe Line Group likewise provides the all-in customs clearance services for export and import consignments by air and sea. It provides help clients need to prepare every document related to export and import customs clearance, finishing of payments, examination, and appraisement. It can clear every type of shipment, whether minor or major, for or from all over the world to the greatest level of client satisfaction.

Safe Line Group separates its services through industry- wide differentiation. Instead of being focused on the price, the Safe Line Group focuses more on having the best quality services in the industry. The company offers, by comparison, inexpensive services, which can assist customers to ship their packages almost anywhere in the world. The company promises its customers with timely deliveries and services of great quality. Its prices have not increased by a great margin during the recent years as compared to other companies in the market, yet its services and quality have not diminished at all. With the advancement of technology, it has been capable of delivering the products to customers quicker and in a more efficient manner to their door steps.

Safe Line Group operates from the United Arab Emirates and it is located all over the country. It provides its domestic and international services to its domestic clients only. At the moment, the company is targeting the domestic segment only, yet it has a wide range of customers and operates in various locations in the United Arab Emirates. Even though Safe Line Group is offering its services to limited segments, it remains a very reliable and dependable company and provides high quality services in the local market. The company has rates that are reasonable and easily affordable by its customers and has positioned itself lower as compared to its rivals in the industry. Nonetheless, the company can handle huge volumes than its competitors and it ensures satisfaction to its clients. The company has taken huge efforts to deliver its clients shipments on time or ahead of time as well as branching out on the international bases. Having its expanding and growing business in the United Arab Emirates, it now makes it simpler and easier for clients to reach out to the company and do business in the international markets. The company offers huge value as well as helps in connecting people and their packages through advanced logistics services.

The logistics industry has grown to be greatly competitive and hence the brands had to spend huge amounts of money on promotions and marketing and use a marketing strategy as well. Safe Line Group has likewise utilized a wide range of channels for reaching its audience and for growing its customer and market base. Starting from television to various other channels and sources of digital marketing, the company has utilized various channels. Other than that, the Safe Line Group has utilized its social media pages and its own website for advertising and promotions. The website has provided a means for clients to contact or communicate with the company. The company has been maintaining its online presence on different social media platforms. Other than the tools, which provide its customers to use its services in a convenient manner, the brochures and other types of documents likewise work for promoting the brand name as well as its services. The outstanding image of the company already does most of the work for the Safe Line Group by assisting it in attracting and retaining its customers.

Apart from that, word-of-mouth has helped a lot because of excellent and high quality services.

Technology has completely changed this industry, meaning that the consistent advancement of technology has become a big challenge for the Safe Line Group. The company had to cope with growing competition due to the adaptability of the latest technology. Secondly, the Safe Line group faced the challenge of market volatility.

The company has not been capable of navigating the volatility of the freight market. Thirdly, the requirements and needs of the customers in the market are increasing with the passage of time. The customers ask for better services. The standard is being set so high by competitors of the Safe Line Group that it has become challenging for Safe Line Group to keep up. The competition in the market has increased because of multinational competitors entering the market of the United Arab Emirates. There are big players such as DHL, UPS, FedEx, and many more operating in the United Arab Emirates, which has been very challenging for the Safe Line Group to maintain its place in the market.

¡ Advancement in technology ¡ Market volatility ¡ Changing needs of the market ¡ Increased and tough competition Solution to Business Challenges In order to deal with advancement of technology, the Safe Line Group should commit to making technological innovations easily accessible and available to its network.

The Safe Line Group would require skilled individuals who can utilize as well as advance technology for making it more valuable to clients. Secondly, in order to navigate the market volatility, the Safe Line Group requires customized supply chain solutions that are made by those provided with expertise, capacity, and scale for helping the company in accomplishing its objectives and goals. The company can be successful in the market by leveraging the macro level tools for forecasting and integrated approach, whether it is inflationary or deflationary. The new and innovative ways for providing data, capacity, expertise, and resources, which assist the Safe Line Group to shift seamlessly from the short term capacity to the long term agility are more critical than before. Through a constant evaluation of new methods to best cater to evolving challenges and needs of customers, the Safe Line Group can establish itself as the trusted provider, which can assist the company to navigate a complicated international and local freight market.

¡ Availability and accessibility of technological innovations ¡ Customized supply chain solutions ¡ Consistent evaluation of new approaches ¡ Use of macro level tools

Successful Best Practices

The Safe Line Group has been engaging its employees to care more about the vision of the company rather than being alienated about getting paychecks and working for their own interests. By engaging the employees, productivity and enthusiasm of the employees is increased and they become less passive. The company attracts fresh and new talent to the company and makes employees take responsibility for their actions and performance. The company has implemented a rewards system in order to get the best out of its employees.

The rewards system makes employees work even harder and be committed to work in order to improve their performance to earn the rewards that have been set by them. The company has fostered the culture of recognition, transparency, and accountability. The best performers are appreciated, whereas others are encouraged to do better and to improve. Apart from that, the company cares a lot about its customers.

The company empathizes its clients and tries its best to establish a loving and long lasting relationship with its clients. The company tries to stand out from its competitions by implementing effective strategies and introducing different services and offers to clients.

¡ Employee engagement ¡ Attracting new talent ¡ Rewards system for employees ¡ Prioritizing the customers ¡ Implementation of effective strategies to stand out from the customers

In the past, there were some practices that led to failure in several areas. The main failure practice of the Safe Line group was hiring the wrong people. The company had made a huge mistake of hiring employees out of necessity, which was also its costliest mistake. The company felt the impact of the overload of work that resulted from vacancy, or when it saw a sudden growth and stress was inflicted on collaborators, the relationship began to suffer and performance began to decrease. Second, there was a lot of politics in the company, which led to misunderstandings between the employees and led to bigger problems. Because of this, there was widespread mistrust in the company, which became a systemic weakness. At last, the management of the company was not capable of handling disagreement. The management could not sort out its internal matter, which made the company weaker since everyone was not on the same page. The apparent disagreement regarding significant problems that arise solely from the individual who tries to hide silent political liaisons or mediocrity became the basis of the organization’s failure.

¡ Ineligible employees getting hired ¡ Internal politics ¡ Inability to handle disagreement

As compared to when it was established, the Safe Line Group has seen a lot of growth and has become a mature organization as a whole. The issues and practices that led to the failure at the start have now been sorted out, and the company is doing way better than before. Obviously, the company has survived for a long period of time and it is still growing, which means that it is doing very well.

The organizational structure has gotten bigger than it was before, since different departments were added in the company, which were not there at the start. Secondly, the company has made a name of itself in the market and has been capable of gaining significant market share.

The company has come a long way and still has places to go. The Safe Line Group has become a major logistics company in the United Arab Emirates and its presence is felt greatly by competitors in the market because of its competitive pricing and high quality services. The company has learned a lot from experience of all these years and it has been capable of improving itself and maturing in a positive way.

Safe Line Group should focus more on its core competencies of timely and reliable delivery, customer service, affordable and reasonable shipping costs, focus on internal operation processes for fulfilling needs of customers, and becoming more efficient. The main recommendation for the Safe Line Group is to expand its operations to other borders as well. The company is mature enough and has a lot of experience to start its operations in other countries. The company has set up its distribution centers in major cities of other countries around the globe. The company can enhance the forecasting time in transit for preventing any delays within the shipment departure. It can develop a new labeling system for every package that is carried by the company. It can decrease the amount of lost or missing packages through implementation of the standardized labeling system on every package. Safe Line Group can automate its sorting processes to make it more efficient.

The implementation of the automated sorting process decreases the manual labor and in return, prevents damaged or broken packages as well as decreases the time of delivery. This eliminates human error in the process of sorting, as well as guarantees that every package is sorted in a suitable warehouse or vehicle for shipping and is shipped as soon as possible.

Lesson Learned ¡ Always stay ahead of the competition.

¡ Make trends rather than following them.

¡ Be advanced in terms of technology and strategies.

¡ Improvement of internal operations and functions is more important than external operations and functions.

¡ Customers should always be the top priority of the company.

¡ Success takes time and hard work of every single person that is involved in the business, whether it is owner or a worker.

In conclusion, the success of the Safe Line Group can be credited to its mission of maintaining and continuing to strengthen its core competencies. Through a continuous analysis of its core competencies, the company has seen a lot of growth over time, setting itself up as a prominent player in the industry in the United Arab Emirates. Over the years, the company has managed to provide services of high quality while simultaneously improving its operations and hence, its rates of customer satisfaction, which seem to be quite impressive. The Safe Line Group has been delivering packages quicker and at affordable and reasonable rates as compared to its rivals. The company makes sure that every package is only handled by trained employees and then shipped in the safest and fastest way, whether it’s through air, ground, or ocean freight.

The company has proved that effective and efficient operations can enable an organization to increase its customer base. In addition, the company has shown that developing healthy relationships with its clients results in major expansion and resultantly earns a greater market share. The company should focus solely on its core competencies and strategy since these are the main things that would earn it great success and growth in future, as it has done in the past years.

Furthermore, it should strive to make its services more affordable and have better quality, because this would earn it a bigger customer base. However, expansion to other countries should be the next big step of the Safe Line Group so that it can grow internationally.