The pace of the world is accelerating, yet inside many organizations progress still feels heavy. The reason is rarely people or motivation. More often, it is the structures behind the work. These are five honest truths about logistics and systems that determine whether an organization moves forward or slowly stands still.
By: Per Imer, CEO, Homerunner
Contains: 914 words
We often talk about culture, leadership, and accountability as the drivers of performance. In reality, culture is largely shaped by the systems people work within every day.
Imagine an employee in customer service or logistics. An order arrives, but the system does not display all relevant data. Additional systems must be opened to find missing information. An Excel sheet is used for verification, and an email is sent to clarify a detail. A task that should take three minutes takes twelve.
Repeated twenty times a day, this becomes several hours of additional work for a single employee. Not because the person is inefficient, but because the surrounding structure creates friction.
Several studies indicate that up to 58 percent of job dissatisfaction is linked to inefficient company systems. Translated into reality, this means that a large share of daily organizational frustration is not caused by attitude or lack of effort, but by architecture.
Systems shape behavior, they shape tempo, and they shape energy.
Architecture is therefore not a technical condition. It is a strategic choice.
Most companies already know where challenges exist. Process maps have been drawn, workshops conducted, and pain points identified. The problems are rarely invisible.
Yet the underlying structure rarely changes.
Initiatives are analyzed, prioritized, and eventually placed in a backlog. Discussions focus on timing rather than direction, and organizations continue working around problems instead of solving them structurally.
Today, technology is rarely the real limitation. Clarity is. If organizations cannot precisely define what needs to change and why, implementation becomes slow and uncertain.
The backlog therefore becomes more than a planning tool. It becomes a buffer for lack of clarity.
ERP, WMS, and TMS systems were originally built for stable operations and consistent processes. They perform best when managing standardized flows.
Over time, however, organizations add layers of specialized logic. Small exceptions, additional rules, and local adjustments accumulate as solutions to immediate needs. Each change makes sense individually, but together they create fragility.
Eventually, systems become difficult to modify. Upgrades feel risky, and even minor adjustments require extensive coordination and testing. Organizational tempo gradually disappears, often without anyone fully understanding why.
The problem is not the systems themselves. The problem is expecting them to serve purposes they were never designed to fulfill.
When an order stops moving, the issue is rarely transportation itself. It is almost always the decision logic behind the flow.
- Who owns the decision?
- Where are the rules located?
- Who can change them, and how quickly can that happen?
If decision logic is scattered across systems, people, and manual processes, organizations slow down. Every clarification requires coordination, and every exception introduces uncertainty.
When decision logic is centralized and clearly defined, flexibility emerges. Organizations shift from reacting to problems toward actively managing them.
The difference lies not in transport capacity or software features, but in how decisions are organized.
The most dangerous aspect of poor architecture is that organizations adapt to it. Extra minutes become routine. Manual corrections are accepted as necessary. Built-in slowness becomes perceived reality.
But if more than half of organizational dissatisfaction can be traced back to system friction, it is not normal. It is structural inefficiency.
Because friction develops gradually, it is rarely questioned. Organizations learn to compensate rather than redesign.
That is precisely why it becomes so costly.
Change does not require tearing everything down and starting over. It requires moving architecture to a place where decisions and logic can operate more flexibly.
The process typically begins with one to two months of honest analysis;
- Where are decisions made?
- Where do people compensate for systems?
- Where does data stop flowing?
- Where is logic hidden?
Implementation then follows, often taking between one and five months depending on organizational readiness.
The result is not simply new systems, but renewed movement. Work shifts from reactive handling to proactive control. Manual compensation is replaced by structured decision-making. Friction turns into momentum.
The greatest risk is not that organizations will build too much software. The risk is that they attempt to preserve structures designed for a world defined by technological scarcity.
If leadership tries to maintain old control mechanisms. If IT continues acting as a gatekeeper in a world without technical scarcity. If middle management protects processes instead of improving them. Stagnation emerges.
Not because technology is missing, but because organizational structures prevent movement.
When we implement Logistics as a Service together with companies, the process almost always begins with skepticism. Many expect heavy projects, complex technology, and long transformation timelines.
Yet once the architecture shifts, we repeatedly hear the same reaction. The question is no longer why the change was made, but why it was not made earlier.
Because the difficult part is rarely the technology. The difficult part is accepting that friction is not inevitable. It is the result of structure.
And structures can be changed.
