Ground.net, an alliance of five international ground handlers in Europe (which together operate at more than 70 airports), laid the foundations for a new, spin-off company in April 2018: ground.net services
Ground.net services (GNS) offers various consulting and operational support services for ground handling companies in the international market. Services include efficiency improvement, digitisation, business intelligence and operational excellence. These topics are discussed closely with the client and tailor-made solutions are found for the client’s company.
GNS draws its experts from the five members of the ground.net alliance.
“We do not consider ourselves as a classical consulting company – we are all actually not consultants but active ground handlers, each of us running a ground handling company,” says Dieter Streuli, chairman of the board.
The company is able to source a wide range of industry experts, from ramp agents to CEOs, and provide their expert knowledge to customers.
So, Streuli explains: “What we have done internally among our partner companies, helping each other out in different challenging situations, we now also offer to other ground handling companies around the world.”
Know-how
Projects mostly start with a visit to the customer, carried out by a manager of one of the ground.net partners. This results in an extensive peer review as well as enabling GNS to learn how the customer has tackled particular challenges in the past.
“So it’s not just PowerPoint slides and then we’re off, but real experience and know-how transfer by accompanying customers until the problem is solved,” says Erik Strandgren, managing director and partner of GNS.
He continues: “Until now the best product we were bringing to the market was the CEO Peer Review. Who else can deliver three to five active CEOs of ground handling companies to assess the actual situation of a customer company for several days? This not only gives a unique insight to the respective management but also a great opportunity to have experienced sparring partners at your location.”
Streuli adds: “We all know that in Europe we were and still are under huge pressure to have the most efficient and productive operation as possible. Simply put, tight flight schedules and immense cost pressure have forced us to do so. We saw at a lot of places around the globe that this process has just started now and will also get more and more intense.
“We are happy to see that we can help our customers in this regard, and accompany them in not making the same mistakes we made in the past. Especially when you are not part of one of the (too) large global ground handling companies, ground.net services can also give you access to an expert network.” |
