Carmen Guillén, the current CEO of CMA CGM Ibérica, began her professional career in the maritime sector in Barcelona, promoting the commercial activity of a young French-Lebanese shipping company that had just arrived on the market. Eventually, CMA was renamed as CMA CGM, its offer jumped from covering the Mediterranean to worldwide coverage, and container volumes grew exponentially. Five years ago, in 2013, Carmen Guillén became its General Director in the Iberian Peninsula and is currently responsible for eight offices in Spain. From her office in Barcelona, she drives the bet of growth that CMA CGM is carrying in our sector, with energy and intensity.
Founded in 1978, the French shipping company CMA CGM is located in 160 countries and has more than 30,000 employees. Currently, it’s listed among the four largest shipping companies in the world.
Carmen Guillén is pure CMA, so much so that an important client of the company told us that they should be called CMA CGG (Carmen’s initials), at least in Spain!
With our Blog as an excuse and the technological trends that we all face in the logistics sector, Carmen has offered us her opinion on this trending topic: digital transformation.
Read her article below:
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In general terms, we could say that digitalization represents an important transformation of the industry and brings profound changes in the way we manage our companies, the relationship with the client and the new business opportunities that come from high added value services.
It’s important to highlight the doubts that arise from digitalization, and the number of people still reluctant to this change, mainly due to the lack of knowledge of the short-term results. The aim is not to replace personnel with software and machinery, it’s the opportunity to add value to their jobs, develop new job profiles, encourage work specialization and increase efficiency.
At the labor market level, we have many factors that reinforce the digital strategies of companies by incorporating digital natives into the workforce and the high offer of existing regulated training. Workplaces are already being redefined by limiting human intervention to tasks of high added value in order to achieve greater efficiency, apart from encouraging the mobility of businesses and professionals. Training will be key to labor need for us to adapt and understand the new environment.
Based on real experience, I can share with you the transformation that CMA CGM Group is carrying out in its business model, where digitalization has been incorporated into the Company not only as a facilitator of the transformation but as a source of real value. This strategy has led to a deep internal reorganization to create a specific department of technological innovation, with a dedicated management.
At the same time, we’re investing in technology-based companies’ incubator for the development of solutions for the transport sector. This is already giving results, in the form of services with high added value and additional products parallel to the traditional maritime transportation business. The agencies worldwide have also adapted to the digital office model (no paper use) and we promote the use of our eBusiness platform of integral scope among all of our clients.
We must take advantage of the new dynamism created around digitalization to face the competition with success and the adaptation to new technological changes, that are now a reality. A new challenge to be faced as soon as possible.
Carmen Guillén
General Director of CMA CGM Ibérica
