A few years late, but Argents went to Cartagena
The Global Affinity Alliance, one of several freight networks to which Argents belongs, held their annual conference earlier this month in Cartagena, Colombia. The city was the planned site of the 2020 conference but…yeah…we don’t have to finish that thought.
With a robust attendance of nearly 500 people from across the globe, the GAA is one of the networks of the World Cargo Alliance. The thing we love so much about this network is exactly in line with what the group’s director Brian Majerus told the attendees at the start of the plenary session – this is a small, tight-knit group that knows one another and loves working with one another.
We’re certainly still wrapping up the networking and connections we made, but this event contrasts with our planned attendance of WCA’s major annual event next year in Dubai which is expected to draw 4,500 attendees and one where if you’re not ready for the dizzying spectacle and onslaught, you’ll be overwhelmed.
Argents belongs to the GAA and several other networks for one important reason – our clients. The companies who are members of this group most closely align with our beliefs and how we approach customer service, manage relations with shippers and consignees and connect technologically to remove redundancy, increase visibility and offer a single service experience, regardless of whether or not a company’s supply chain involves two countries or twenty.
The GAA offers resources that we utilize for our clients, too. The group has more than two dozen ocean contracts that, combined with Argents’ own carrier contracts, give us rates and service and capacity across the globe. The group has access to insurance products for both cargo insurance and customs bonds, plus servicing offices around the world, ensuring that for those rare but inevitable times a claim must be filed, there is experienced and knowledgeable support ready to make a cargo owner whole in the event of a loss.
Perhaps the most important part of these meetings is taking time to sit across a table, whether in a meeting or a restaurant, or on a team building scavenger hunt through the old city of Cartagena, to build and reinforce the kinds of lasting personal relationships that are the bedrock of what we do every day for our customers.
If you’re deep in logistics and logistics jargon, you hear the term “digital forwarder” thrown around a lot. Well, the great forwarders are digital forwarders – because our clients expect us to deliver technology that lowers their cost and increases the stickiness they have with their customers. But for every RPA or chatbot, there is a company of people who hand off the rote processes and spend their available time devising and delivering solutions for their customers.
The GAA members with whom we met are the people we work most closely on those solutions for you, our customers. It’s a privilege to spend time with them, it’s a humbling thing to call each and every one of them a friend and we hope that the work that we do with them on behalf of your business shows with every shipment we move.