Broadening its focus to now include yachting, Crossworld, a market leader in crew management is investing in people. “Talented people, who have the right skills to envision the future and meet our clients’ business needs,” notes Makram Daouk, Business Director at Crossworld, during his talk with OnDeck about the philosophy, the dynamics and the goals of the acclaimed company.
Makram Daouk, Business Director, Crossworld
Investing in people is about building strong partnerships
interview Elena Mathiopoulou | photos George Svolopoulos
What is Crossworld’s competitive advantage?
For years, Crossworld’s slogan has been “Together Always Ahead” and its motto has been about “investing in people”. It means forging a strong partnership with our clients mainly, but also our seafarers, our employees or other stakeholders to constantly come-up with propositions that better suit our clients’ business. In a way, it’s about not being stuck in a mould and always being able to reshape our level of servicing towards the new needs. Building strong, long-lasting partnerships and being nimble and flexible in our approach is what has helped us reach the point where we are today. We’ve naturally got a lot of work to do still to exploit our full potential, but the management and our team are hungry for Crossworld’s and its clients’ success, and we’re fully committed to reaching ambitious objectives.
What goals have you achieved so far?
I only joined CWMSI a year ago, and in our credentials presentation I found a goal stated as “becoming a world-class crew management and manning agency”. In a way, I think my predecessors have already achieved that. We have over 4,000 crew onboard various types of vessels at any time and most of our clients, crew and employees are loyal to us over many years. We’re in a good place. But now we have to schange gear, especially with the upward trend that the market is currently following. That includes the yacht crew sector where we’ve so far had some “organic” success without actively trying to grow in that sector, till recently only. Besides commercial shipping that follows its usual up and down cycles and where we’re gladly doing fairly well, yachting has been on a climb for a while now and Covid-19 has just boosted its growth even further. We’ve just become more proactive on that front, and it’s not a coincidence that you see us participating in events like the Olympic Marine Yacht Show.
We want to seize every opportunity to provide competent crew members to the huge number of yacht owners and charter companies who are in need of professional crew and service, be it deck and engine personnel, or hotel staff.
Makram Daouk along with fleet supervisors Ms Tonia Papageorgiou & Ms Mary Alexopoulou
What is the biggest difficulty or obstacle you had to overcome?
People and relationships are our biggest advantage. But people are also our biggest everyday challenge. No two people are really the same, and keeping it together with the different people, be it clients, seafarers or our staff has always been and remains the challenge we face daily. We have to balance people’s business, socioeconomic and even emotional needs throughout an industry that’s ever-shifting under the surface. Reading early signs is key, and of course, acting early on to manage a change is a must.
"Reading early signs is key, and of course acting early on to manage a change is a must"
What is the key to success for a company?
People again. We’re very fortunate our organisation resembles more a family than anything else, and its members are keen and committed to ensuring the company’s goals are met. And it all starts from our CEO, Mr. Simos Varias who literally spends his every day looking for ways to take the company to another level, be it process-wise, service-offering-wise, technically or technologically. They say “where there is a will there is a way”, and I can comfortably say that all of CWMSI’s management, not to say all team members have the will and are hungry for growth and success. With that powering our day-to-day, I am confident we will reach new highs. In the meantime, we are not perfect and we still make mistakes, but we know we must learn from our mistakes and carry on trying to climb up.
Have you considered expanding your services to other business sectors?
Yes, as I’ve mentioned before, being nimble is part of who we are. Yachting is just an example of a new area we are exploring actively. The reality is that we’ve always sought to understand what our clients’ businesses, our seafarers and our staff need and come up with innovative solutions.
That has led us to a number of new ventures like a new related service, such as Healthcare Maintenance Administration services, launching a Global Medical Care application called DoctorNext2Me or even vessel repair services. To me and I’m sure to many of our staff, this direct or indirect involvement in diversified new projects really adds to why I have the drive to go to work every day.
If you were asked to describe Crossworld’s philosophy in 3 words, what would they be?
Family, Transparency, Dynamic.
