Investment Management

Value-oriented corporate management and the corresponding goal of increasing the value of the company build on the idea that management must direct its attention towards using the company’s resources as efficiently as possible. In other words, a company can achieve enterprise value and the objective of value-oriented corporate management only if it optimises its use of capital and its cost of capital so that the return it generates exceeds the costs associated with the assets used to achieve it.

In the DPDHL Group a value orientation is rigorously anchored in the group’s strategy, which aims to make the group the first choice for customers, employees and investors. Its approach to value-oriented corporate management relies on two pillars: first, the continuous improvement of the group’s core business and second, ensuring profitable growth. Using the example of DHL Supply Chain Southern Europe, the following article describes how a value orientation can be successfully implemented in a logistics company and then lived in practice thereafter.

Investments and customer agreements

In logistics companies, particularly providers of contract logistics, managing customer agreements constitutes a crucial aspect of value-oriented corporate management. Providers of contract logistics generally assume the logistics services of their customers for a contractually agreed period that usually extends for three-to-five years. There are two types of customer agreements:

• fixed agreements (closed book),
• open agreements (open book).