Special delivery

Jim O'Gara's story is both inspirational and captivating. The protagonist is a humble and devoted man who went from driving a delivery truck for UPS in the United Kingdom to being the company's number one man in South Asia.

Prior to that, the Glasgow native spent a decade serving his country in the British armed forces, an experience that taught him the modest traits that still underlie all his words and actions today.

"It was a great foundation for me as I grew and matured," the 55-year-old Scot recalls. "It certainly humbles you, being in the armed forces, through the respect for people and the camaraderie that you build among your peers at work."

One of his jobs in the service was teaching people how to drive. On his return to civilian life, he used the experience to open his own driving school.

"When I left the military, there was always that determination:'What will I do now? Will I start my own business? Be an entrepreneur or will I seek other employment?'

"Back then (in the military) I worked for myself, my wife, and the Queen," he says with laughter. "Now I am working for myself, my wife, and UPS."

Mr O'Gara got married at the age of 19 and now has three children. In terms of loyalty, his post-military service has all been with one employer since he joined UPS at its package centre in Exeter in 1995. Armed with an MBA from Leicester University, he was rapidly promoted into management before his international exposure began in 2005 when UPS sent him to Riyadh.

After two years managing the business in the capital of Saudi Arabia, he returned home in 2007 following UPS's acquisition of another UK parcel carrier, Lynx Express, as part of the integration team. Eighteen months later, Mr O'Gara was on the move again -- this time to Lagos as managing director for Nigeria and Sub-Saharan Africa, where his responsibility stretched across 44 markets from Senegal to Kenya and as far south as Mauritius.

"I remained there for three years and again it was a kind of full P&L (profit and loss) responsibility from contract logistics and freight to express package movement," he recalls of his time in Lagos.

He moved back to Europe in 2011 as managing director for UPS Italy in Milan for another three years before moving to Asia for the first time when he landed in Singapore in 2014. Mr O'Gara is now in charge of the company's package and supply chain operations in the region the company designates as South Asia, covering 28 markets across Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands, including Australia.

'LAST LAND OF OPPORTUNITY'

If you count the 44 countries in Africa, as well as Saudi Arabia, Italy and the 28 markets that he now oversees, Mr O'Gara has been responsible at one time or another for about one-third of all the places UPS serves during his 23-year career. In his new role he has also represented the company as a thought leader at World Economic Forum events in Asia since 2015.

"It is not like working for the same organisation for 23 years, because the assignments, the opportunities and the business changes regularly, to the point where you are doing something different all the time," he says.

"The basic principle may be the same as far as growing your business, but the changes we have seen over the life of UPS have been immeasurable ,from drivers delivering packages with a piece of paper and then getting a signature on it … to where we are spending US$140,000 an hour every day of every week of every month -- over $1 billion annually -- just on technology."

Having lived and worked across three continents and managed businesses across multiple markets, what Mr O'Gara has learned about companies is that most of them want to establish themselves in a market where things are more routine, but the excitement and opportunities that Asia holds seem almost like "time travelling" to him.

"You feel like you have seen this happen before and you know what is going to happen at the end, and that's what so exciting and vibrant about Asia," he says. "You know that the talent within the region itself is ever improving and the infrastructure is improving, to the point where the best airports in the world are here now."

Mr O'Gara believes Asia is the last land of opportunity because there is no other place in the world with the same potential, given the rapid pace of economic growth plus access to and availability of modern technology.

"This is because there has been such a foundation that they have been able to tap into to pull it forward, be it technology, innovations or the talent to accelerate the way they move forward in business itself. So there is nothing but upside as far as I'm concerned here in Asia," he says.

TECHNOLOGY ON THE MOVE

To maintain its position of the world's largest express delivery company and a leading global supply chain integrator, UPS has to invest heavily in technology. Its main focus now is on drone delivery, its On-Road Integrated Optimisation and Navigation (Orion) system, the UPS My Choice programme and autonomous vehicles. However, the organisation is still mindful of how it invests its resources.

"[Technology] is limitless in terms of how you want to spend your money and someone being there to take it," he says. "But we have to make sure that it is appropriately funded in an amount that will allow us to invest adequately in a business that we know will continue to flourish, and to get a return on that particular investment."

Opportunities for drones and autonomous vehicles are growing, in his view, because people's dependence on technology has been increasing since the smartphone came into play.

He offers the logistics warehouse as an example. In the past, there would be a person moving around on a forklift or going into a storage cage to do stock-taking. Now a drone can be used to look across shelves, providing greater efficiency as well as security. Companies can also send a drone to inspect the perimeter and use it for other maintenance purposes.

"From an electric vehicle (EV) perspective, the initial vision would be the connection from highway to hub, and you can have a tandem routing of vehicles that are going to take goods from hub A to hub B," he continues. "That can work with electric vehicles or alternative fuel type vehicles and UPS will always remain committed to having a minimum impact on the environment.

"Electric vehicles can now go almost as far as a petrol-fuelled car would, and batteries are becoming smaller, and we would be ostriches sticking our heads in the sand if we believed that it won't progress."

UPS in July announced its collaboration with Thor Trucks, a US-based startup, to develop and test a fully electric medium-duty delivery truck in Los Angeles. The class-6 delivery truck, with a driving range of about 160 kilometres, is expected to be ready for deployment later this year and it will be equipped with a lightweight battery designed and built by Thor.

This is part of a company plan to add about 9,300 low-emission vehicles -- including all-electric, hybrid electric and compressed natural gas powered -- to its fleet as it strives to understand which technology works best on which kinds of routes. To achieve this, it has partnered with Workhorse Group to deploy all-new electric delivery vans that could replace tens of thousands of vehicles in the fleet and ultimately improve the current fleet's fuel efficiency by 400%. It has also pre-ordered 125 electric semi-trucks from Tesla.

"Technology has a place in the modern day and age," says Mr O'Gara. "It is not something that one should be fearful of because it is something that should be embraced, encouraged and invested in.

"There will be fads that will just be gone in a puff of smoke, and there are others that will have more longevity because they have the right research, the right development and the right investment."

As a transport organisation with more than 100,000 drivers on the road every day, UPS has to make sure that its vehicles have minimum impact on the environment, but there is also the human aspect in terms of job displacement when talking about autonomous vehicles. However, Mr O'Gara, who used to drive for the company, believes there is no reason to be afraid in this regard.

"In the United Kingdom, they used to mine for coal and there is no coal business in the United Kingdom anymore, but it doesn't mean that all of those miners did not do anything after that, as there is the steel industry," he points out.

Even with autonomous technology, the initial stage of deploying them to move goods from hub A to hub B will require someone to be present within those vehicles. There will also be other opportunities as the industry advances for the people who have already been trained and built up a knowledge base in their various jobs.

"There are over 400,000 people working for us now and we have been at over 400,000 people for as long as I can remember. Technology has made advances over that period which haven't been at the expense of the people," he stresses.

"As we expand globally, Asia today and Asia in 2025 will be a completely different business with more opportunity, larger in scale, covering more home addresses. So, the expansion, the growth and the opportunity that we can provide to our employees will more than offset (the changes that occur) if autonomous activity starts to coexist with the business itself."

OPTIMISED DELIVERY

One example of coexistence between UPS's current backbone, which is its drivers, and new technologies is the Orion system, which was designed to find the fastest and most fuel-efficient ways to deliver packages to customers. It is arguably the world's largest operations research project, using extensive fleet telematics and advanced algorithms to gather and calculate countless amounts of data to provide drivers with optimised routes.

For example, UPS drivers make an average of about 100 delivery stops per business day, so finding the fastest route is definitely the key to efficiency. Orion can determine the optimal way to deliver and pick up packages within a set of stops defined by start time, commit time and pickup windows. It relies on online map data, customised by UPS, to calculate distance and travel time to plan the most cost-effective routes.

As a result, the system is now considered a comparative advantage that will help improve the UPS My Choice personalised delivery system. It can set delivery times and offer other options to some 6 million members that have signed up so far. In terms of numbers, the company is now saving about 160 million kilometres per year, which works out to a reduction of 38 million litres of fuel consumed.

The programme also reduces carbon dioxide emissions by about 100,000 tonnes. Initial results also show that a reduction of just one mile per driver per day over one year can save UPS up to $50 million.

Keeping an enterprise the size of UPS running smoothly and profitably could be likened to a large-scale military campaign. Certainly it requires high levels of discipline, but the other leadership lesson Mr O'Gara drew from his military career was how to be humble. "There is no 'I' in team," he likes to say. "People work with me and not for me."

Having been shaped since a young age in the military, he has learned to appreciate that "everyone has a voice", and he uses his to express loyalty and commitment.

"From a professional education perspective to a young man evolving through life: I have been married for 36 years, I have three children, and every decision I have made and in every job that I have been in, you obviously give it as much as you can," he says.

"The best qualification as far as I can see, if I could rewind my life now, all the way back to birth, there isn't a single thing that I would change in the way that I have got to where I currently am, as well as decisions from marriage, to parenting, to the locations where we have lived."