- Expeditors grew on the back of a solid core culture that was lived and breathed. In the last decade or so however, a lot of the cultural elements are talked about, but not necessarily lived within the organization. Pretty unfortunate really.
- The compensation system is antiquated, and always will be. While it served the company and employees well in the early years, it hasn't kept up with the times. A large percentage of employee pay is bonus based. In the US this isn't as much of an issue because the bonus scheme basically is for supervisors and above. Globally however there are a number of regions where every single employee's income (from top to bottom) is paid utilizing the bonus scheme. And why is that done? Because the bonuses are paid post-net revenue in the P&L. This means that the reporting of net revenue is essentially inflated to make the financials look good as opposed to if they paid a higher base pay in line with market rates. Higher base pay for employees = lower net revenue for the company. And why is that a bad thing? Because banks don't give loans based on potential total income (bonuses). They assess financial risk based on committed income, which equals Expeditors' base pay only. This makes it difficult for lower level employees to get things like mortgages, or loans for a car. But hey, at least the net revenue looks good.
- In its inception, Expeditors introduced a new business model to the freight forwarding industry that basically every forwarder follows now. This made them innovative at the time. They were even innovative for a great deal of time in their systems and architecture, which added a unique value proposition for Expeditors' customers. Unfortunately, the company has not kept up with the pace of digital transformation. In addition to this, the company has a strong culture of promoting from within. While this isn't a terrible thing in that it provides growth opportunities for the team, it also limits the exposure of the organization to new ways of thinking and to new talent with experience in the most recent technologies. All this put together means there is a strong belief within the company that they are "innovative," when, in fact, they have fallen sadly behind. There is not a lot Expeditors can do from a tech perspective that basically every other legacy forwarder can do now days. And that isn't even considering the leaps and bounds that newer, more technically savvy logistics companies are making. Here is a good example of innovation from the Expeditors "Developer Center" page; right at the very top.
"What’s New with the API?
GET /shipments call now accepts a time in the start and end parameters, allowing customers to retrieve a list of shipments that have been updated by Expeditors Operations within a specific date and time range.."
The introduction of a time parameter in an API call. "Innovative."
