JAS IN THE AMERICAS

JAS USA is proud to be in attendance at the upcoming Coverings 2019 event. Taking place April 9-12, 2019 in Orlando, Florida, USA. 

Coverings is the global tile and stone experience. For close to 30 years the Coverings event has been the premier event for the natural stone & ceramic tile industry in North America, with visitors coming from all over the world and providing valuable connections and information to attendees and vendors alike. 

JAS USA is excited to meet you! Come visit our booth, number 6020, and find out how our people make the difference! 

​On March 8, 2019, JAS Colombia celebrated its 20 year anniversary. 

The celebration took place in the city of Bogota, with enjoyable cocktails with JAS Colombia's most important clients. JAS Colombia was also delighted to be joined by JAS Worldwide Top Management as special guests at the celebration. These guests included Marco Rebuffi (Global CEO), Adrian Emmenegger (EVP Americas), Manuele Mazzacurati, Angelo Simpson, Maria Emilia Davila, Rindo Mariani, and David Gonzalez. All of whom had the opportunity to interact with  local clients as well as JAS colleagues.

Such an important milestone shines light on an important milestone for JAS Colombia, which is led by Maria Paula Eslava, its Managing Director. Many elements were obtained from this event: experience, strategy, internal synergies, and a team that  wants to work hard to make a difference.

JAS Colombia would like to especially thank their global network of colleagues for the support provided during these past 20 years.

The beautiful city of Lima, Peru on the Pacific Ocean was the setting for the scenario of the 2019 JAS Latin America Sales Meeting on Feb 6 and 7, 2019. 

The protagonists of the meeting were all JAS Sales Managers and Global Account Directors from the nine JAS subsidiaries in Latin America. All of whom did a fantastic job to make it a productive and dynamic meeting. It was an amazing time full of focused discussions and great integration.

The event was hosted by our Latin America Regional VP of Sales & Marketing,  Manuele Mazzacurati. The meeting resulted in a great success also thanks to the presence of several special guests such as Stefano Castellazzi (VP Sales & Marketing Italy); Stefano Olmi (VP Sales & Marketing APAC); Margarita Rubio( National Account Manager China), Tony Romano (VP Sales & Marketing USA), Stefano Redditi (EVP Sales & Marketing),  Adrian Emmenegger (JAS Americas EVP), Matt Ross (VP Supply Chain Solutions), Matthew Burgess (VP Global Ocean Consolidation Services), Lars Huebecker (VP of Ocean Freight Americas).

During the two days of activities, attendees had a chance to analyze 2018 results and set strategies for 2019. This, in addition to several workshops, focused on customer solutions.

We appreciated everyones participation and contribution to this event, which was great and well organized with the help of JAS Peru. 

We look forward to a fantastic 2019, our great people will certainly make the difference!

The first edition of the Americas Regional JAS Management Program, Leading Into the Future meeting took place in 2018 and consisted of Managing Directors and Directors from all over the region whose scope of responsibilities within their countries include Operations, Sales & Marketing, and Finance. 

Leading into the Future, a JAS Management Program is a highly interactive program which includes online training, individual analysis, and personalized coaching. These processes and tools give individuals the ability to unleash their full, individual, potential as well as gives them the drive to energize their teams and empower others to consistently achieve higher levels of performance.

This higher level of performance allows JAS to deliver better and more consistent results to our customers by focusing on results through four modules. These four modules focus on you as a leader, your team, our organization, and an integrated view of all three. 

List of Participants who have attended and completed the 1st Edition pictured below:

​Joao Machado is the new National Account Director for JAS USA. In his position as Director, he is responsible for directing the sales development, procurement and collaboration strategies activities within the Natural Stone Vertical on a national level.  

Mr. Machado is originally from Brazil and he has over 19 years of experience in the Freight Forwarding industry in the areas related to Sales, Operations, Ocean Procurement and Management. He is specialized in the industry of Natural Stones out of Brazil, Italy, India, Spain, China and many other countries and he will be able to assist JAS networking and customers with any questions or concerns. For many years Mr. Machado was globally responsible for moving the exhibitions of the Granite fairs in Vitoria (Brazil), Coverings (USA) and Verona (Italy). He is fluent in Portuguese and English and he has a Master’s degree in Business Administration from the Fundacao Getulio Vargas in Brazil. 

Joao Machado started his career with Figwal, a Brazilian based freight forwarder and moved up to multinational companies such as ABX Logistics and DSV Group. Joao originally joined JAS in December of 2009 in Vitoria, Brazil to develop the Natural Stone Vertical. Even though Joao started as the head of the stone division for JAS Brazil, his experience in P&L, sales, operations and product, allowed him to also held other important positions such as Regional Sales Manager, Branch Manager (Santos Office), and National Trade Lane Manager for the Southbound USA-Brazil.  Due to Joao’s very long and established career in this Vertical, in 2015, Joao accepted the challenge to join JAS USA as part of the Natural Stone Development team together with Mr. Leon Kouyoumdjian, to leverage JAS business presence in this specific market, provide customers a competitive advantage for their businesses and improve the value of the industry with respect to capacity and specialized services.  

As the biggest stone market in the world, with total consumption of over US $30 billion in 2018, the US market trends are of the highest importance to many stone processing factories all over the world to mention some: Brazil, Italy, Spain, India, China, Turkey, Greece, Vietnam etc. 

With his high level of drive, experience and enthusiasm, we look forward to Joao leading the Natural Stone Vertical.

​The Quest for Quality Awards are the gold standard for customer satisfaction and performance excellence for carriers, ports, and logistics providers worldwide. 
 
“Quest for Quality Awards are uniquely purposeful in our market because the winners are determined by our readers—the buyers of logistics and transportation services who put these carriers and service providers to work on a daily basis all over the world,” said Michael Levans, Group Editorial Director of Peerless Media, LLC., the publisher of LM.  “Logistics Management readers are proud to honor them with the highest vote of service confidence when they do. There is nothing that compares to these awards in the market,” said Levans.
 
About the Quest for Quality Awards
 
To determine the best of the best, LM readers—logistics, transportation, and supply chain decision makers—rate carriers, third-party logistics (3PL) service providers, and U.S. port operators strictly on the basis of service quality. One of the most notable elements about the Quest for Quality Awards is that it calls these shippers to vote in the genre of services in which they are customers; therefore, they vote for the providers that they believe have best delivered on quality service in specific niches.
 
This year, LM had 4,500 ballots cast from logistics and supply chain decision makers resulting in 138 transportation and logistics services providers who earned Quest for Quality gold. Of these, JAS Worldwide was voted #1 in Customer Service for Airfreight Forwarders for 2018.
 

​Logistics Management magazine and logisticsmgmt.com are the leading business-to-business information resources for logistics and transportation professionals in charge of the planning, management, purchase of freight transportation services.

JAS USA is excited to announce the new Southeast Asia Trade Lane Director, Vivien Ng. 

A message from Vivien: 

​The Vice President of JAS Manufacturing, Dwayne King and the Vice President of JAS Automotive, Jim Ryan, just spent a very productive week in Brazil and Argentina.  They were joined in the tour by Mr. Robert Gulyas (Global Account Director for EMEA) and by Mr. Manuele Mazzacurati (VP Sales LATAM) and were able to meet with several important clients at both locations. 

The development of key verticals across the Americas is a top priority for JAS Worldwide. Replicating best practices and sharing industry specific expertise is bringing a tremendous benefits to our customers.

On July 31, 2018, JAS Mexico celebrated its 20th anniversary. Under the leadership of Mr. Claudio Testa, who opened the first office in Guadalajara, Jalisco in 1998, JAS México now has 10 branches from north to south covering most of the country and delivering the best in class service to our customers. 
​
A big thanks to all JAS México employees for their dedication and commitment. As our slogan says "People make the difference" and they did and continue to do so, helping  JAS Mexico reach this important milestone. 

JAS is proud of the progress made during these first 20 years and look forward to the next 20! 

A formal celebration will take place in November in the beautiful town of Tequila, Jalisco to commemorate this very important achievement with JAS customers and colleagues. 

JAS has strengthened its technological investment under a new platform. JAS is an international freight forwarder with a top 10 ranking in the country of Peru, with the highest growth in air imports. JAS is favored by the implementation of solid market penetration and growth strategies with its clients in respective markets, as well as the development of technology that raise the level of productivity of its operations and quality of information in real time.
 
JAS Forwarding Peru has tools that include JAStrack and GlobalOne. These are tools that allow the company and its clients to have absolute control over the development of their operations, to have full visibility of the processes, compliance or deviations, and even cost structure from start to finish of your operations.
 
The user, through a password, can manage tracking, obtain reports, and print shipping documents in their offices, commercial invoices, packing lists, among other things, in real time. With this, one can analyze the performance of your operations with the references you choose. In addition, JAS has implemented various management indicators (KPIs) to measure and evaluate processes and service quality. Both JAS and the client can use this tool according to their needs and what is useful to each user or operation.
 
This administration, reports, and KPI analysis allow the company and the client to make management decisions from a more strategic perspective. “The main commitment is to provide essential information for decision making, evaluate operational performance and decision making,” states Carlos Lozano, Commercial Manager JAS Forwarding Peru SAC.
 
In addition to this platform, JAS Forwarding Peru has had an important impact in the consolidation of results for its services, growing outstandingly in the development of its products, both air and maritime.
 
To deepen the momentum achieved in the growth of JAS and the management of this platform, we spoke with Carlos Lozano, Sales Manager of JAS Forwarding Peru.
 
What growth figures are there to highlight in your Air, Maritime and Customs operations?
 
“We have grown substantially in the imported air product this year, with more than 26% of the volume with respect to last year; despite an adverse conjuncture of capacity and spaces towards the second semester of last year, while our exports grew in a smaller proportion. Regarding the maritime product of import, we maintained the expectations of growth. In exports, we consolidated our position in the market tripling the volumes, with respect to the previous year, consolidating ourselves in the development of exports in Latin America, making synergies with the countries of the region which has helped a lot in the negotiations at the regional level.
 
Likewise, at the customs level, complementing the services in destination to the import and export charges, we managed to grow more than 37% in the number of operations with respect to the previous year.
 
Our platform has allowed us to make timely decisions, add value to our customers, improve our processes and reduce costs.”
 
What strategies and service capabilities have helped you achieve this in your services?
 
“We focus on working hand in hand in the critical points of our clients; improving, for example, in the case of air products, the impact of partial shipments of volume cargo, as a result of the high demand for spaces and low capacity in some markets; through plans of shipments (forecasts) mitigating the partialization. At the same time, we focused on removing the charges at destination, the same day they arrived, avoiding incurring additional costs.
 
Likewise, we put a lot of focus on strategic traffic, where we were able to develop high value products, optimization and implementation of new consolidated ones, allowing to have safe spaces to competitive conditions.”
 
Regarding your new warehouse in Miami, what motivated your installation? How is it designed and how will it contribute to the company's objectives?
 
“Growth in our operations and the excellent results of JAS in the United States and in the world; considering that Miami concentrates 80% of the US export cargo, at the corporate level it was decided to expand our warehouse capacity in Miami to be able to serve our customers more efficiently, with many added values ​​with personalized service. Today we have a warehouse of more than 90,000 cubic feet, we have all the quality and safety certifications, high technology systems, 34 service doors, and 24-hour service to meet air and sea cargo in the same location.”
 
What improvements have you added to your Customer Service and what impact has it had on the consolidation of JAS?
 
“The strategy for this year remains in growth and profitability, which is why the Customer Service function is essential for the retention and growth of our businesses, which is why we have reinforced the area with personnel with a high impact profile and have all of the necessary resources to meet the requirements of our customers.
 
Although we have GlobalOne, this system definitely does not replace people; despite being a powerful tool, we have a very motivated Customer Service team that has allowed us to consolidate our clients under the culture of proactivity and flexibility that characterizes us.”
 
JAS has a tool called JASTrack. What does this tool consist of and how is its management carried out?
 
“JAStrack is a very powerful tool that has allowed our clients not only to have a usual visibility and follow-up, but to manage the logistics chain efficiently, allowing an absolute control of the performance of their operations, as well as full visibility into the start-up cost structure to the end.
 
In JAS Forwarding we establish indicators and commitments with our clients. These agreements allow us to better understand the business and adjust the service according to each need, we assign measurement KPIs that we evaluate periodically.
 
The level of access of the tool can be offered at all levels, from a daily operational level, to a managerial level, the main commitment is to help the decision making according to operational and compliance performances.”

Empresa fortalece inversión tecnológica bajo nueva plataforma “GlobalOne y JASTrack”. JAS es el agente de carga internacional, dentro del top 10 del ranking del país, de mayor crecimiento en importaciones aéreas, favorecidos por la implementación de estrategias sólidas de penetración y crecimiento en sus clientes en los respectivos mercados, así como del desarrollo de herramientas de tecnología que elevan el nivel de productividad de sus operaciones y calidad de información en tiempo real.

JAS Forwarding Perú, uno de los principales agentes de carga, cuenta con la plataforma GlobalOne y JasTrack, herramientas que le permiten a la Empresa y a sus Clientes tener un control absoluto del desenvolvimiento de sus operaciones, disponer de una visibilidad completa de los procesos, cumplimientos o desviaciones, e incluso estructura de costos de inicio a final de sus operaciones.

El usuario, a través de un password, puede administrar el seguimiento, obtener reportes e imprimir en sus oficinas documentos de embarque, facturas comerciales, listas de empaque, entre otros, en tiempo real. Con ello puede analizar el desempeño de sus operaciones con las referencias que elija.

Asimismo, la Empresa implementa diversos indicadores de gestión (KPI ́s) para medición y evaluación de los procesos y calidad del servicio. Además, JAS y hasta el propio cliente pueden adecuar la herramienta, según las necesidades e indicadores útiles a cada usuario u operación.

Con esta administración, reportes y análisis de KPI, permite a la Empresa y al Cliente la toma de decisiones gerenciales desde una perspectiva más estratégica, generando economías a escala, productividad operativa y la optimización de costos. “El compromiso principal es facilitar información esencial para la toma de decisiones, evaluar desempeños operativos y toma de decisiones”, indica Carlos Lozano, Gerente Comercial JAS Forwarding Peru SAC.

Complementariamente a esta plataforma, JAS Forwarding Perú ha tenido un impacto importante en la consolidación de resultados por sus servicios, creciendo de manera sobresaliente en el desarrollo de sus productos tanto aéreo como marítimo.

Para profundizar acerca del impulso logrado en el crecimiento de JAS y el gerenciamiento de esta plataforma, conversamos con Carlos Lozano, gerente de ventas de JAS Forwarding Peru.

¿Qué cifras de crecimiento hay por destacar en sus operaciones Aéreo, Marítimo y Aduanas?

“Hemos crecido sosteniblemente en el producto aéreo de importación más del 26% del volumen respecto del año pasado; a pesar de una coyuntura adversa de capacidad y espacios hacia el segundo semestre del año pasado; en tanto nuestras exportaciones crecieron en menor proporción. Respecto del producto marítimo de importación, mantuvimos las expectativas de crecimiento y en exportaciones consolidamos nuestra posición en el mercado triplicando los volúmenes respecto del año anterior, consolidándonosasíeneltopranking vía desarrollo de exportaciones en Latinoamérica haciendo sinergias con los países de la región lo que ha ayudado mucho para las negociaciones a nivel regional.

Asimismo a nivel de Aduanas, complementando los servicios en destino a las cargas de importación y exportación, logramos crecer más del 37% en número de operaciones respecto del año anterior.
Nuestra plataforma nos ha permitido la toma de decisiones oportunas, agregando valor a nuestros clientes, mejorando procesos y reducción de costos.”

¿Gracias a qué estrategias y capacidades de servicio han logrado esto en sus servicios?

“Nos focalizamos en trabajar muy de la mano en los puntos críticos de nuestros clientes; mejorando por ejemplo, para el caso del producto aéreo, el impacto de envíos parciales de carga de volumen, a consecuencia de la alta demanda de espacios y baja capacidad en algunos mercados; a través de planes de embarques (forecasts) mitigando la parcialización, pero a su vez, nos focalizamos en retirar las cargas en destino, el mismo día que llegaban, evitando incurrir en costos adicionales.

Asimismo, pusimos mucho foco en tráficos estratégicos, donde pudimos desarrollar productos de alto valor, optimización e implementación de nuevos consolidados propios, permitiendo tener espacios seguros a condiciones competitivas.”

Acerca de su nuevo almacén en Miami, ¿qué motivó su instalación?, ¿cómo está diseñado y de qué manera contribuirá en los objetivos de la empresa?

“Aconsecuenciadelcrecimientoen nuestras operaciones y a los excelentes resultados de JAS en los Estados Unidos y en el mundo; tomando en cuenta que Miami concentra el 80% de la carga de exportación de USA, a nivel corporativo se decidió expandir nuestra capacidad de almacenes en Miami para poder atender a nuestros clientes de forma más eficiente, con muchos valores agregados con servicio personalizado. Hoy contamos con un almacén de más de 90,000 pies cúbicos, disponemos de todas las certificaciones de calidad y seguridad, sistemas de alta tecnología, 34 puertas de atención, servicio de 24 hrs, para atender cargas aéreas y marítimas en una misma locación.”

¿Qué mejoras han añadido a su Customer Service y qué impacto ha tenido en la consolidación de JAS?

“La estrategia para este año se mantiene en crecimiento y rentabilidad, es por ello que la función de Customer Service es esencial para el retention y crecimiento de nuestros negocios, es por ello que hemos reforzado el área con personal con un perfil de alto impacto y disponer de los recursos necesarios para atender los requerimientos de nuestros clientes.

Si bien disponemos de GlobalOne, definitivamente este sistema no reemplaza a personas; no obstante de ser una poderosa herramienta, tenemos un equipo de Customer Service muy motivado que nos ha permitido consolidar nuestros clientes bajo la cultura de proactividad y flexibilidad que nos caracteriza.”

JAS cuenta con una herramienta denominada JASTrack. ¿En qué consiste esta herramienta y cómo se realiza su gestión?

“JASTrack es una herramienta muy poderosa que ha permitido a nuestros clientes no solo tener una visibilidad y seguimiento habitual, sino administrar la cadena logística eficientemente, permitiendo un control absoluto de la performancia de sus operaciones, así como visibilidad completa en la estructura de costos de inicio a fin.

En JAS Forwarding establecemos indicadores y compromisos con nuestros clientes, estos acuerdos nos permiten entender mejor el negocio y ajustar el servicio de acuerdo con cada necesidad, asignamos KPIs de medición que vamos evaluando periódicamente.

El nivel de acceso de la herramienta se puede ofrecer a todo nivel, desde un nivel operativo diario, hasta un nivel gerencial, el compromiso principal es que ayude a la toma de decisiones según desempeños operativos y de cumplimientos.”

In June, 2018 JAS Brazil celebrated its 28th anniversary of successful service. 
​
JAS Brazil began its journey in 1990 with an office in Manaus, and then expanded to 12 other states with 10 of its own offices and exclusive agents in the nation’s main ports and airports, who take care of imports and/or exports.

Today, JAS Brazil is one of the biggest offices from the JAS Worldwide Group. JAS Brazil is headquartered in São Paulo, the third largest city in the world and South America's main economic center.

JAS Brazil has made incredible progress and achievements over the last 28 years and looks forward to commemorating the next years as well. 

Congratulations JAS Brazil! 

JAS Brazil has a new Controller in the finance department, Mrs. Fernanda Ribeiro.  Fernanda joined the team on July 10th, 2018 with a wealth of experience, including heading Finance & Accounting departments at CEVA and DHL before joining JAS. 

She has a strong background in corporate finance, controlling, accounting, and taxation, with over 20 years of experience in our industry.
​
Welcome Fernanda!

The Q1 Meeting for JAS Brazil took place at the JAS São Paulo branch after the first quarter of 2018 and reunited all of the directors, branch and product managers to hear about the events that have been taken in 2018 thus far.  

The meeting was full of presentations regarding how the chosen strategy of each individual manager will reach their goals. Meetings like this are important to JAS and its team members and keep our teams and goals in alignment for the rest of the year. 

​In April 2018, JAS Chile brought on a new Managing Director, Mr. Rodrigo Bustos.

Bustos is an Industrial Engineer with 15+ years of experience in multinational companies. Over the last 10 years he has worked for DHL in Chile and Mexico in different operational and sales roles.

​“The key goal for JAS Chile is to become recognized for our excellent service level." said Bustos.

Chile has a stable market in the region with a strong and aggressive competitors approach but Rodrigo intends to improve targets by focusing on the following 3 pillars:

People: 

• To have the best and most talented team
• To have a motivated and JAS loving team
• To have open and respectful communication 

Growth:

• Increase our market share by building a strategic sales team
• To develop a strong network and trade lane strategy

Service:

• To add value to our customers by having a service culture throughlut the whole organization
• To take advantage of our state-of the-art IT capabilities

JAS Chile is pleased to announce a new Sales Manager for JAS Chile, Ms. Carolina Matamala.

As part of a new growth strategy, JAS Chile is happy to introduce new Sales Manager, Ms. Carolina Matamala. Carolina has more than 11 years of experience in the forwarding industry. Prior to joining JAS, she held many different roles, including roles at Panalpina and Kuehne Nagel. Carolina is excited to join the JAS Family and looks forward to adding her experience to the team. 

JAS Chile and Carolina will implement a strategy based on 4 main areas in the coming months.

1. Increasing employee knowledge and satisfaction  
2. Increasing market share by developing new and expanding on existing key tradelanes
3. Making higher customer satisfaction possible
4. Increasing synergy between all departments within JAS Chile. 

Carolina shares the JAS belief that "People Make the Difference" and looks forward to the future with JAS Chile.  

​Welcome Carolina! 

Seven out of nine subsidiaries of JAS in Latin America were passionately living the excitement of the FIFA World Cup 2018! Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Colombia, Peru, Panama, and México all celebrated and watched the games.  

It was a fantastic occasion for everyone to get together and support their heroes, especially with the team spirit and passion of the JAS colleagues in the region. 

Every year during the months of July and August, each subsidiary of JAS organizes a Mid-Year Sales Event. 

During the meetings, every sales executive has the opportunity to present to top management. They often present their achievements during the first half of the year and their plans to achieve targeted goals in the future months. It is a fantastic occasion to discuss strategies and ensure alignments with the company's targets in order to achieve another excellent year of results! 

This year, the VP of Sales of Latin America, Manuele Mazzacurati, is personally attending the event in every subsidiary, while the EVP of Sales WW, Stefano Redditi, will be attending the events in Mexico and Brazil. 

​JAS Argentina has faced and overcome many challenges this year, as well as adding many new people into their Managing Team. The new additions have been more than beneficial and made great contributions to the team's growth. Gisela Alamán, the new Sales Team Manager, has helped improve and enlarge the client portfolio through her conscious and active work. Nicolás Rossi, the new Air Freight Manager, has brought with him all of his experience in the field, helping in make JAS' clients confident in the team's reliability. Francisco Mella joined the team as the new Ocean Freight Manager. His drive and innovative ideas have contributed immensely to the team's strength. Lastly, Silvia Santoro, who was previously with JAS, took on the challenge of managing the Operations Department. Her accurate work and diligent search to find solutions has brought the Managing Team closer to fulfilling and exceeding clients' expectations.

This year, JAS Argentina had the opportunity to host two events with their clients to promote the Asia Trade Lane in Argentina. They wanted to build stronger relationships with their clients and make sure they keep in mind what it is that makes JAS Argentina different. JAS Argentina is confident that their team will give their clients the support they need and help them see the value of JAS. 

Back in March, JAS Argentina hosted a wine tasting with some of their air freight clients. Stefano Olmi, Vice President of Sales Asia, and Grego Vrhunc, Vice President of Air Freight Americas, were also present. It was a great time to create a closer bond with clients and help them see JAS Argentina's value. 

​A few  days ago Avianca Cargo gave special recognition to their top cargo partners for 2018. Included in this recognition was JAS Colombia, whose increase in air exports paved the way for this recognition. JAS is proud to be a top cargo partner to Avianca Cargo and looks forward to continuing with and growing our partnership with them in the future. 

Congratulations to JAS Colombia on their great achievement! 

​Last year Steren, an electronics company headquartered in Mexico and one of JAS' loyal customers, had their main office in Mexico catch fire. This fire caused serious damage and forced Steren to relocate their corporate office. 

After a year and a half of hard work and dedication Steren has a new corporate office.  And to show their support and to commemorate their triumph over a difficult situation, JAS Mexico has gifted Steren a beautiful world map decal with the Steren and JAS logos present for their new logistics office wall. The Steren team was very grateful for this gift of a new office decoration which shows their shared team spirit and commitment with JAS.  

JAS is proud to stand with our strong and resilient customers as they face challenges and come out triumphant. We are better together and look forward to our futures moving forward. Congratulations to Steren on their new corporate office. 

JAS is proud to introduce our new Transpacific Trade Lane Director, Leon Kouyoumdijian. 

A message from Leon: 

Kouyoumdjian has been in the Logistics Industry for 19 years and during that time has amassed a vast amount of knowledge from various positions held throughout his career.

After finishing Business school in Copenhagen, Denmark Leon moved to Atlanta in 2002 and has held various sales and managerial positions. Prior to joining JAS he held the position of RVP of Southeast & Southwest Region for Scan Global Logistics.  Leon was tasked with increasing the quality and profitability of three branches in conjunction with managing a team of around 30 people across those regions.  It was during that time he discovered the learning curve never ends.

Kouyoumdjian originally joined JAS in 2010 to develop the vertical of Natural Stone. Much of that business originated in Brazil which, years later, led he into the position of Trade Lane Director of Southbound Brazil.  During that time he acquired a variety of intelligence[s] and techniques on how to make a specific trade lane successful.

After serving that lane for a few years and building the Stone Vertical to it’s optimum level, Leon was asked to go in a very different direction; but it was a path that intrigued him.  He accepted the position as the Import/Export Trade Lane Director for China and HKG in mid-2017.

Within many organizations, there are strong synergies that exist between the Operations, Sales, Product, & Management teams. Nurturing this synergy is the key to obtaining healthy growth within a company. JAS USA is now using what they call “The Playbook”; a process that analyzes opportunities together with Product, Trade Lane, and Sales. The Playbook allows sales executives to evaluate the best or "Top Opportunities" in their region, then bridge the gap between Sales and the rest of our organization more fluidly. 

The definition of “Top Opportunities” is not based on volume or GP as one might assume.  Instead, it’s based on accounts within the JAS CRM Database, which, with their current rate support from trade lane & product offerings, these clients would benefit from additional service offerings. Identifying these opportunities allows JAS to reach out to customers more readily with service offerings that can greatly benefit our clients and create more opportunities for our customers. 

Note: The current CRM requirements are not changing, and the Playbook is only highlighting these particular “90%” opportunities from the JAS CRM system to include them in the Playbook.

This concept allows JAS to secure LTA’s / Bullet / Commodity or Name Account Rates based on volume by combining accounts from the Playbook, giving our customers more options, as JAS is now able to present 6-7 accounts with a combined volume instead of with the individual approach.

Sales today often utilizes more of a consultant stance in order to satisfy the needs of clients. With the “Playbook” process; the same approach is used internally to bridge potential gaps between Sales and Product interactions, allowing for more meaningful conversations with customers.

The beautiful city of Bogota, Colombia was the location chosen for the 2018 Latin American Sales Meeting. The annual meeting is an event where all JAS Sales Managers and Global Account Directors from the nine JAS subsidiaries in Latin America meet and discuss the past year, goals, and strategies for the future. 

This year the event was hosted by JAS Latin American Regional VP of Sales & Marketing,  Manuele Mazzacurati. The meeting was a great success and strengthened synergies at the regional and global level, as attendees were also privileged with the presence of several special guests such as the JAS VPs of Sales & Marketing of the USA, Tony Romano, and Asia, Stefano Olmi, JAS VP of Air Freight, Gregor Vrhunc, and JAS Americas EVP, Adrian Emmenegger. 

During two days of activities, attendees had the chance to analyze 2017 results and outcomes and set strategies for 2018. This, in addition to several workshops, focused on customer service and business development.

JAS Latin America appreciates everybody´s participation and contribution to this event, which was great and well organized with the help of JAS Colombia. 

We look forward to a fantastic 2018, our great people will certainly make the difference!