Top standards, localization important in business: DHL

LEIPZIG - Hürriyet Daily News

The success the company has achieved by focusing on quality and locality, a DHL executive has said. Company photo

Successful globalization stems from ensuring equal quality standards and a thorough understanding of local elements, according to Roy Hughes, DHL’s executive vice president of Network Operations in Europe. 

Hughes spoke to Hürriyet Daily News during the cargo giant’s international media event at the massive HDL hub in Germany’s Leipzig, highlighting the importance of standardized processes and incorporation of cultures. 

“We do the same thing, everywhere,” Hughes said. “What you have to do is have globalization and an element of localization. All countries will have different cultures. But the way we manage, and the way we do everything else, the training we have internally as well, all of it is the same material, the same methodology.”

Hughes told the Daily News that the company, with a global network spanning more than 220 countries and territories and over 500 airports globally, has managed to keep “that standard approach across the globe” while equally understanding the cultural factors on site. 

“All cultures are fundamentally the same and different. If I go to see our guys at Sabiha Gökçen, or Atatürk [Airport], or Athens, or Italy, or Sweden – fundamentally, people are people,” Hughes said. 

The success the company has achieved by focusing on quality and locality appears set to continue with no sign of a slowdown in the firm’s expansion, Hughes said.

DHL is set to enlarge its already lion’s share of the market, incorporating newly emerging markets such as the Czech Republic and Romania. 

“We still see emerging markets in terms of the Czech Republic and Romania and Bulgaria, equally, as the economy is recovering from 2008 and 2009. It is beginning to step up, and we think we are ideally positioned,” Hughes said.