The story of Vincent
Vincent has been a part of our organisation for over seven years, within the organisation he is responsible for connecting and supervising all warehousing activities that overlap with sales.
Tell us about yourself.
Vincent Kleiboer, I have been a part of Schotpoort Logistics for over seven years. Two of these years as Inventory Manager and five as Account manager warehousing.
What does your job entail?
As Account manager of warehousing, I am a member of the sales team, within this team, I am responsible for organising and guiding all activities related to our warehousing.
How did you find this job and Schotpoort Logistics?
To be specific the job actually found me. I had been working as an inventory manager within the warehousing department of Schotpoort. That is how I learned about Schotpoort’s activities and its warehousing clients. After a year of two I was added to the sales team to guide the warehousing processes and facilitate the sales of warehousing space.
What makes your job at Schotpoort challenging, fun and/or interesting?
We never have a single “normal” day at the office and that is exactly the most fun aspect of my job, the diversity. Schotpoort Logistics is not exactly a very large organisation and because of our size I am not constantly working on account management but instead on multiple tasks.
When we start to do business with a new client we always want to ensure a “soft landing” for both the client as well as our colleagues. By clearing the first few hurdles that always arise when starting a new project, we are able to establish a solid basis before handing over the project to the Operations department.
Sometimes you will have a meeting with the board of directors of one of your clients, the other day you will be unloading a trailer to check if the processes of said client are running smoothly. That diversity is what makes the job fun and challenging.
What are the disadvantages or less pleasant parts of your work?
Naturally you want to keep everyone satisfied and happy, unfortunately that is not always a possibility. If things go awry, you as the account manager will have to mediate between your clients and your colleagues from the Operations department to find a suitable solution for the problem.
In your opinion, what is the difference between Schotpoort and other logistic service providers?
Personally, I have never worked for a different logistic service provider so I cannot really say how these organisations operate and where that differs from schotpoort’s methods. What I like about working for Schotpoort is the fact that, once something goes wrong we all complain and argue about the problem and how this could have happened however, at the end of the day we all work together to solve the problem and offer a solution, from our colleagues in the warehousing to our drivers, planners and management.
The informal work environment and direct culture, is something that really suits me and that I prefer when working for a company. If there is an idea or feedback to improve something internally, we do not wait for carefully drawn out plans or research. We propose a change and discuss the proposal with the involved departments or employees and change the plan if necessary, after that a decision is made and the plan will be implemented. That decisiveness is something that I can appreciate.