NEW ORLEANS – QCS Logistics CEO Ronnie Burns and son Jason Burns, QCS partner and vice president of business development, are featured in an article, "Driving Your Business into the Future," in the summer issue of CLDA magazine, the official quarterly publication of The Customized Logistics and Delivery Association.
The two discuss the company's succession planning for the New Orleans-based family owned business with the help of Tulane Family Business Center at Tulane University.
QCS is a New Orleans based “Same Day” logistics firm that has provided courier, freight distribution and warehousing services since 1984. QCS offers expedited delivery solutions throughout southeastern Louisiana and the Gulf Coast region via a delivery network and innovative technology. The company’s diverse fleet of vehicles ranges from bicycles to 24-foot box trucks with the capacity to service both large and small parcel shipments.
CLDA Magazine contributor Karen Hales reports, “Eighty-eight percent of current family business owners believe their family will control their business in five years. But statistics undermine this belief: less than a third of family owned businesses survive the transition from first generation to second, and just 10 percent continue to the third generation.”
“In the courier industry, some 60 percent of business owners are looking to leave the industry in the next five years,” Hales reports. “For many, selling the business to another company may be a very likely scenario.”
Hales reports QCS started out as Quick Courier Services, Inc. in 1984, when the company had one car and three employees, and tracked deliveries with index cards on a board. Now, QCS is considered one of the largest courier companies in Louisiana and an Inc. 5000 “Fastest Growing Private Company,” with more than 75 vehicles that complete more than 1,000 deliveries a day.
Hales reports, “The failure of family owned businesses is often due to several common traps…. some proprietors of family owned firms make their children feel obligated to join the company, which can backfire by creating a crop of managers who aren’t interested in being there. On the flip side, subsequent generations may feel a sense of entitlement and see the business as a fallback option where there will always be a place for them regardless of skill set, experience or commitment to the business.”
“Another trap facing family owned businesses is that working and living in a family business can insulate family members from outside feedback creating silos where they are not challenged or inspired by outside voices,” Hales reports. “In contrast to publicly owned firms, in which the average CEO tenure is six years, many family businesses have the same leaders for 20 or 25 years, and these extended tenures can increase the difficulties of coping with shifts in technology, business models, and consumer behavior. Today family firms face new threats from growth in automation, globalization and a myriad of other changes in the way we make, order and receive goods.”
“Succession should not be viewed as simply an exit strategy for when the founder retires but as the integration of the next generation of leaders into the company,” says Rosalind Butler, assistant director of the Tulane Family Business Center at Tulane University.
Read the entire CLDA Magazine article here
