MORE COMPANIES in this country should associate themselves with solid in-house training and the development of job creation. Freight service industries will grow in this manner, says El Shaddai Freight chief executive officer Veni Andrew.
Five years from now I want our company's name to be synonymous with job creation, she says. We are an empowerment organisation and our mode of operation in both operational and administrative tasks is executed by owner managed third parties to stimulate job creation.
The company has been listed in South Africa's top 300 in the Millennium, and has taken the Sanlam annual award (1997) and the Emerging Entrepreneur Award for Gauteng. Apart from this Andrew herself is a three-time nominee for the country's businesswoman of the year award.
But she brushes thoughts of these accolades aside when talking strictly of the business scene.
Disciplines excellence is something we must all think about and have in front of us at all times. Our aim always is to be the best, not necessarily the biggest, and never to be taken as a second best.
To do that we have employed a team of proactive people who have a single outlook of keeping abreast of every booking and never allowing ourselves to be told by a client it's too late.
By that Andrew points to the company's rapid courier services which range from sameday express to less demanding - from a time structure - road economy operation.
In the sameday express service, El Shaddai undertakes a policy which few others would be prepared to follow in specifying that delivery is made door-to-door and within 90 minutes of flight arrival.
Often earlier, she adds. We telephone a client within 30 minutes of delivery if requested, and this is a service we have available to all centres serviced by scheduled airlines.
Promptness in delivery times is the target of the company. Overnight and dawn express deliveries operate in the same manner with next day services available in the domestic airfreight and road express categories.
The unique express delivery is, as its name suggests, totally unusual and applies in cases where emergency consignments are so urgent the sameday service is not rapid enough. A special vehicle is dedicated to this request.
An owner-driver and owner agent mechanism is in place with some 4000 owner-drivers now seconded to the company. Ownership, says Andrew, has redefined commitment, and El-Shaddai has maintained this paradigm in order to perform with a difference.
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