Page 8 CentralBeat / CentralBiz
Vashty Maharaj Editor
“ When people come to work in Ramps , they realise very , very quickly whether they would fit in or not ,” Shaun Rampersad , Chief Operating Officer of Ramps Logistics told Central Beat in a recent interview about the company .
“ Within the first three months you have a good idea whether you are going to make it long term here or you ’ re not . And we generally don ’ t have people in between . It ’ s either people come in and they , we and they , realise that hey , listen , this is not going to work out and be honest with them : it ’ s not that you are a bad or a good person , you just don ’ t fit in here . And when they stay , they stay for long periods of time and they grow the business and they go into different areas of the business .”
There are several good reasons that people choose to stay with the company and a lot of that has to do with the type of work culture that the key figures at the company have been trying to establish . Those key figures are Shaun , his brother Rudy , the Operations Director ; and the founder of the company , their father Ramnarine Rampersad . Together they have created a dynamic company that just this year won the very prestigious Exporter of the Year award from the Energy Chamber of TT . How did this little company grow into this in-demand and honoured entity ?
Ramnnarine Rampersad started the company in 1985 as a customs brokerage and grew the company over the years until his sons joined and began to change the focus of the company .
Shaun , speaking to CBeat on behalf of the company , explains : “ When I joined the business we were a customs brokerage company with about 10 people . What we realised was that even though we were handling just a part of the supply chain , just the customs clearance , there were other parts of the supply chain that were ultimately affecting delivery to the end customer . So we started doing freight forwarding , then we did purchase order management and now basically , for our largest customers , from the time they generate a purchase order up to the point of delivering it to the warehouse , and even for some customers in terms of managing and inventory within their warehouses , we handle every single aspect of their supply chain .
“ In fact I would say that we are the most integrated supply chain provider in the country and probably the Caribbean as well . And we have adopted that philosophy every-time we have expanded the business . That ’ s why we have been able to grow and expand , because our customers understand that when something goes wrong , we are not going to say well the problem is not us , it ’ s either we can fix it or we can ’ t fix and we take that very seriously .”
With that kind of uncompromising commitment to quality service the company has expanded to over 110 employees based in offices in TT , but there are also other offices in
Guyana , Suriname , the US and Haiti . Last year the company made the unexpected move from main offices in Woodbrook , Port of Spain , back to the Rampersads ’ hometown of Cunupia .
“ Almost 70 to 75 percent our staff live either in south , central or the east . So it ’ s always been a dream for us to move out of Port-of-Spain ,” Rampersad says . “ When customs went online and allowed you to do EDI , Electronic Direct Input , instead of having to physically present something , we saw that as a real opportunity to decentralise our business out of Port-of-Spain . We kept a small office in Port-of-Spain , but 90 percent of our business , not just in Trinidad , but in the region , we control it out of these offices in Cunupia . Our offices here are linked to all of our offices in Guyana , Suriname , Haiti and the US and we do central IT from right here and we basically manage all of our business from right here .” Why Haiti ? “ In 2012 we realised , and the advice that we were given back then was that for 5-7 years the Trinidad economy would see sustained economic pressure . So if we want to grow and expand at the rate that we wanted to , we had to look outside . So we identified markets with high growth coupled with high risk and the high risk was because we said you know if we are a Caribbean company and we grow up doing business in Trinidad , well why shouldn ’ t we be able to manage businesses with high risk ? Because if you operate outside of the developed world then inherently , you should be able to manage risks better because you live in those places , you work in those places .
“ We identified three main markets , Haiti , Guyana and Suriname . Haiti is a market of 10 million people . Very high risk of doing business there but the beautiful thing with high risk is that you also have lower competition . So in a market like Haiti where we have done pretty well , you don ’ t have a lot of the big competitors in the world going to there because it ’ s just not on their radar . The level of competition in those markets are significantly lower .”
There was risk in Guyana too , since Ramps Logistics entered that market in 2013 , before the talk of oil and gas in that country . Yet by 2015 the company won a major contract from Exxon who were drilling in deep water in the area .
“ Guyana was a big risk ,” Rampersad notes , “ but again , because we had already been in the market for a while and we understood the Guyanese market and because we had well-trained , very intelligent young Guyanese working with us , it gave us an edge , again , over the international companies . And it goes back to that philosophy that we had in 2012 about entering markets with high growth and high risk .”
Last June , of 2016 , Ramps Logistics opened a company in Guyana called El Dorado Off Shore , focused on recruiting , training and then putting out to work Guyanese nationals in the oil and gas sector .
“ In fact , we are the first company to put a number of Guyanese to work
May 2017
Ramps Logistics brings a new work culture to TT
The Rampersad family enjoying the award for Exporter of the Year from the Energy Chamber of TT . From right are : Ramnarine Rampersad , Shaun Rampersad , Javed razack and Rudy Rampersad .
Ramps Logistics staff out in the field .
off shore and then we also opened a company in Trinidad this year . It started off as a Guyanese company , it ’ s now become a Trinidadian company . We just won a major contract with the drilling contractor in Guyana to supply Guyanese labour on the rig in Guyana . It would be the first time that Guyanese would be working on the Exxon campaign on the actual rig .”
That kind of ground-breaking work takes us back to the company culture that echoes throughout the workplace in Ramps Logistics .
“ One of the reasons we have been successful ,” Rampersad says , “ is that because of the downturn in Trinidad you had a number of very , very intelligent Trinidadians who couldn ’ t find jobs and we basically took a few of them and we put them into business units that were dedicated to growing new businesses and new areas of businesses . And that ’ s the thing that I think we have to understand . We have to understand that the growth in businesses or the success in businesses really comes down to the quality of the personnel that you have and the quality of the management team that you have . If you are able to find really smart people and get them focused and operating as a team , there is really no limit to what you can achieve .”
In order to nurture and maintain the bright minds , the company has inculcated an ongoing ethic of lifelong learning , positive play and giving back to the community . The learning includes nearly 50 modules that the company developed over time to educate the staff on a variety of relevant issues including things like business etiquette . Those modules are now being organised for posting freely on the company ’ s social media points for other persons and companies to use . “ I will tell you the biggest thing that we are is that we are a learning organisation . You have a lot of organisations that grow , they get to a certain level and then they become static because we start becoming dependent on what we already have . What we focus on and what our team is focused on , is that every single week , how do we learn , adapt and innovate ? In fact so much so that the first thing that we have in our management meetings every single week , when the team works , is that we designate two or three people to say what they have learnt in the previous week and it doesn ’ t necessarily have to mean something that is related to the business itself , but the idea is that we want a group of people who open and expand their minds .”
In order to make the work enjoyable for the 100 plus employees who often work 50 or 60 hours per week , the company has introduced a number of activities for their physical and mental well-being . This could range from anything to a hike , to board games , regular Trini-style limes and much more .
“ We have a lunch as a team every single Friday and that hasn ’ t been this year or last year . That has been seven or eight years we have been doing that every single Friday .
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