Trade facilitation in logistics services: Some evidence from a express delivery service provider

Abstract

In today's competitive world, express delivery service (EDS) providers are changing the way they do business by innovating on services. Today's businesses are fraught with complexities. Moving shipments across countries' borders maybe fraught with problems due to administrative, technical or legal reasons. This paper seeks to find out if express delivery service providers are able to facilitate trade, helping traders to navigate through the complex trade processes and transactions. Opportunities for value proposition by express delivery service providers are highlighted through process decomposition and swim lane diagrams. These opportunities are validated with interviews with a small select group of existing customers from various industries. The results of the interviews show that cost and service capabilities are the top criteria in the selection of service providers, while visibility and pro-activeness are key factors for total customer satisfaction. This paper highlights the importance of service innovation in today's competitive world, and attempts to highlight the challenges through the case study of a service provider. © 2008 IEEE.