For North American shippers, the key to finding new opportunities to reduce inventories and operating costs is to work closely with a strong partner like Damco North America to analyze the supply chain, says Haycock.

Damco has invested in a team of supply chain developers who are able to dig deep into customers' supply chains to find areas for cost savings, he says. "We benchmark against best practices in the industry and we share that knowledge with our customers. This allows new or existing customers to see how they are performing in relation to their competitors and where they need to improve."

Damco North America is following a strategy set in 2010 that goes through 2015 aimed at making the company a top five logistics provider in the ocean and airfreight sectors, says Haycock. "We have achieved what we set out to achieve to date and are very confident that we also will hit our targets in 2013. We don't expect an easy market this year, but the market hasn't been easy for the last couple of years," he says, noting that Damco has experienced nine consecutive quarters of growth, despite difficult market conditions. Haycock attributes this performance to "a lot of hard work and investing in the right people."

Technology also plays an important role, he says, with Damco developing most of its technology solutions in-house. "Many of our customers are looking for individual, tailored solutions and we can only provide that if we develop our own products and technologies," he says. "Of course we have some backbones in our technology that are the same as other companies, but we also have the agility to adjust to our customers' requirements. I think it is extremely important that we don't try to make our customers adapt to us but rather we adapt to what our customers need and require."

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