Global 4PL Supply Chain Services' Sergio Retamal Advises Mastering Change Mangaement: Pros to Know Award

Supply & Demand Chain Executive: Hello, my name is Marina Mayer, Editor-in-Chief of Food Logistics and Supply and Demand Chain Executive, and I am here with Sergio Retamal, CEO of Global 4PL Supply Chain Services. Sergio is a recipient of this year's Pros to Know Award in the Leaders in Excellence category. Sergio, thank you so much for joining me today.

Let's first talk about you. Tell us a little bit about yourself, and your journey, and how you got to this current stage in your career.

Sergio Retamal: I spent roughly 30 years in supply chain management, operations, logistics.

Early in my career, I gained tremendous experience working for a global hard disk drive company. It was a U.S. company, but production in Asia, with distribution through the U.S. and Europe.

Later, I spent a few years working for Ryder Integrated Logistics, which basically manages at that time, Apple and applied materials. So I gained tremendous experience there, managing over $60 million in freight for Sun Microsystems, which now is Oracle. And saving them tremendous amount of money with new processes. So I took that experience and corporate experience and I started Global4PL with the idea to centralize supply chain operation experience, straight-forwarding software into a package.

Supply & Demand Chain Executive: One of the things outlined in your submission is how under your leadership, Global 4PL has embraced a forward-thinking approach, leveraging cutting-edge technologies to transform logistics operations. Kind of walk us through what this forward-looking approach entails, and how your company is using these technologies to improve logistics.

Sergio Retamal: My philosophy has been that you cannot separate the physical aspect of supply chain from the execution and the experience that you need. Even if you have tremendous software, if you don't have the knowledge, if you don't visualize and control the physical movement of the goods, you're not going to have an optimized supply chain. Our philosophy has been to concentrate all those experiences in trying to manage a process, which is very fragmented. All the data from different locations, just to move anything from Asia to the U.S., you have at least 32 different players. Having the capacity, capability to control the data and being able to execute is fundamental.

Supply & Demand Chain Executive: Also outlined in your application is how you help develop new AI software to optimize the track and trace of materials globally. And this is such a hot topic nowadays. So with this new AI software, kind of walk us through what it is and tell us a little bit more about it.

Sergio Retamal: Supply chain has many pain points, but one of the biggest is visibility, traceability, and by default, that is what allows you to manage the supply chain. We have been developing software for our own use and our customers for many years. And AI is providing additional capabilities that before you didn't have as being algorithm to be more proactive, predictive.

And, if you marry that to experience and boots on the ground because you may have a very smart software, but you have to have people behind taking the actionable information and controlling the process. What we have been doing for the last 10-15 years is develop software that allow us to control our processes in the visibility, traceability, basically everything to do with the physical movement of goods, but adding these new tremendous capabilities that we're just starting to enjoy out of the new systems.

But, but that's not predictability of new events in control, in optimization is much more capable nowadays than you could have ever done before, especially for small players.

Supply & Demand Chain Executive: And you also launched a new division for domestic transportation where it improved the network of IOR services in 160 countries to incorporate in-country services for data centers and IT companies. What does that mean? Kind of walk us through what that entailed. That sounds like a big, big overhaul.

Sergio Retamal: That's a big project. So IOR, basically it allows you to import in different countries. The service, basically, you are providing a legal entity, customs brokerage, duties and payments, all the processes that you need to have in order to import into any other country.

Even though currently, most of the spend in the U.S. is in a hardware center, all those deployments need to be done globally.

Then having the capacity to have the domestic vision, they solve one of the big problems, which is the pickup anywhere in the country from door to door to anywhere in the world. So currently we have the capability and we're providing services in 160 countries where we can pick up anywhere, the domestic activation in the U.S. It can deliver anywhere, worldwide.

Now one of the more difficult issues with data centers is you have a high level of security. They're very high-value equipment. They're very large equipment. So having that control, which allows you to have an end-to-end supply chain for high value, high touch, white glove service for this very expensive equipment. It's a tremendous capability that it's difficult in the U.S., but if you say from the U.S. to Qatar, or U.S. to China, U.S. to Brazil, I have multiple layers, not including what you have to have your legal entities, the customs capability. There are countries such as Brazil where you have 105% duty rate, which has been there for many, many years. It makes it a very complex supply chain, but more importantly, larger players or companies that have IT center or data center, they need to have the capability that once they plan to execute, you have to be there flawlessly in marrying all the different components of the supply chain that they need to work on time so you can get a deployment of very expensive equipment, very sensitive equipment, complying with U.S. laws, complying with the local laws, and making sure that your compliance is flawless because the penalties are huge.

At the same time, the physical movement of the goods is complex just because of the size and the complexity of the criminal.

Supply & Demand Chain Executive: The Leaders in Excellence category honors company leaders who've made outstanding contributions to the supply chain space. What advice do you have for other professionals in supply chain?

Sergio Retamal: I would say the main is basically change management.

Every day is different. If it's not tariff, if it's a war or a hurricane or you name it, the economy's changing a bit. We're going from a global economy to more of a multilateral economy, which affects the red tape, there's so many changes. So the main advice is you have to be a student of change management.

I personally have a master in change management. That was something I proactively sought to study, and I got that master at Pepperdine University.

But the idea was that, supply chain is so complex. If you don't have that capacity to manage change, which is constant, you may be a very good supply chain operator, but you're not going to be a very good executive or leader because that is by far one of the main skills that anybody who's managing supply chain has to have change management, right?

Supply & Demand Chain Executive: What is the one thing we haven't discussed yet that would be a good takeaway for our audience?

Sergio Retamal: I'm personally passionate about education and mentorship.

Through the years, I used to teach supply chain management at Custer University, Northridge.

Before that, I did modern warehousing at Fullerton State University on their professional certificates.

The fact is, part of a job of a leader in, of any executive is to mentor others. The next few years is so challenging for new professionals. I'm lucky. I'm in the last third of my career.

The fact is new players getting into the industry, especially in post-COVID where the networks, in the on-site capability of many companies, having mentorship, having professional, education programs for the new players is fundamental. I think that is one of the biggest.

And the second would be that I'm trilingual, English, Spanish, and Portuguese, which helps me develop those cross-cultural relationships, and it has been fundamental for somebody who is in the international business, especially in Europe and some countries, but just having additional capabilities that allow you to be more effective.

There's nothing else like being multilingual, bilingual, or at least have some programs of mentorship and professional education.

I love to study. I continue studying as many programs as I can, but at the same time, you have to give back and provide those opportunities to new players and those who want to grow in the industry.