Prior to the recent acquisition by logistics multinational DB Schenker, SB Global Logistics was a 60-employee strong business with headquarters in Christchurch.
The company was established in 1990 and grew to become one of New Zealand’s top supply chain firms providing international freight forwarding and contract logistics. Because of its strong South Island foothold, the company was acquired by DB Schenker in 2017.
Transitioning their systems and culture from a local into a global corporation while maintaining business as usual has been quite an undertaking, as it would for any business.
With 65,000 employees and about 2,000 offices in 130 countries around the world, DB Schenker is the world’s second largest provider of integrated logistics services.
SB Global Logistics first approached The I.T. Team when Microsoft Office 365 was introduced offering cost-effective hosted services and improved licencing. As administering and managing their Microsoft Exchange system on internal servers was more time-consuming, migration was a no-brainer. However, their former IT provider didn’t have the expertise and recommended The I.T. Team for the task.
At that time, SB Global Logistics had two IT staff. When their network technician resigned, the company was left heavily reliant on the IT Delivery manager, and mitigating the business risk became a priority.
The next major challenge came after the acquisition by DB Schenker: transitioning the IT systems across while meeting the multinational’s strict requirements.
It took less than three months for The I.T. Team to migrate SB Global Logistics’ system to Office 365. They did it progressively and everything went well. As the relationship developed, the scope increased to provide critical incident support, external advice on best practice infrastructure, and IT support.
Connon Daly, The I.T. Team General Manager, explained, “It was initially a trial arrangement to have two of our staff onsite, but it’s been operating for three years now. We’re providing high quality skill from multiple resources to DB Schenker and we scale to their needs during projects and peak working periods.”
Reon Edwards, DB Schenker NZ Director, recalled, “When our IT Manager was away, there was significant risk to the business and we wanted to mitigate that so we wouldn’t be so reliant on him. We decided to increase The I.T. Team’s hours and bring two of their technical staff into our Christchurch office twice a week. It made them feel more part of the team and it was very beneficial for our staff.”
When the SB Global Logistics was acquired by DB Schenker, the IT demands changed considerably. To help them with the transition, The I.T. Team was tasked with migrating their onsite legacy systems to the DB Schenker system.
“It’s a big challenge moving to a global system. It’s also a huge culture change,” said DB Schenker NZ IT Delivery Manager, Alex Smith. “The multinational systems are more rigid and, in most cases, the decisions and company directions are dictated from the Germany head office and regional head office in Singapore.”
Reon explained that, globally, DB Schenker has its own IT support network offshore in China and India. “The original strategy was to have our support desk offshore and none on the ground, but practically that doesn’t work. We still need local IT support to do the hands-on work. The model in Christchurch has been working well and has since been rolled out to our Auckland office, with a potential to roll it out to Australia too,” he added.
