Ray daSilva - President - Mobility Exchange

Name: Ray daSilva

Position: President

Company: Mobility Exchange

Professional Background

Mobility Exchange, LLC, President (United States): 2016 – Present

Intelexe, LLC, Principal (United States): 2012 – Present

Interstate International, Group President (United States): 2014 – 2016

Security Storage Company, President, International Relocations (United States): 2006 – 2008

RedSky Mobility Solutions, President (United States): 2008 – 2012

Crown Relocations, Executive Vice President (United States, United Kingdom, Singapore): 1982 – 2005

Career Insider

Q: Why global mobility, and how did you get started in the industry?

A: I got into the business by chance as many of us do. I was in Anchorage, Alaska and had decided that my career as a Program Coordinator at the Boys Club of America had run its course. I was talked into interviewing for a job as a Moving Consultant for military moves at a United Van Lines agent called Alaska Orient Van Service. 

While I had a very negative view of sales and sales people, the interviewer made the job sound so interesting and the compensation wasn’t bad either. Alaska was an interesting place during those pipeline boom days with incredible opportunities. The short story is that with no background in sales, I was promoted to sales manager within 2 months. Of course, the sales department was just the two of us but at the age of 23, it was exciting stuff, and I was hooked.

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Q: What aspect of your work at Mobility Exchange do you find most exciting?

A: I’ve been associated with this industry for close to 40 years. I started as a surveyor and worked my way to executive positions at some of the largest companies in our industry. I have been privileged to work for some fantastic business owners, especially Jim Thompson of the Crown Worldwide Group. Jim didn’t always agree with everything I proposed but at some point trusted me enough to do some pretty innovative things. I learned a lot. 

In each of these positions, I had to balance the parts of my job that I was very passionate about and interested in with things that I did not necessarily enjoy as much but it came with the territory. At this point in my career, I am now engaged fully with my own business, Mobility Exchange, where I am passionate, interested and engaged in every single aspect of my work. That is a nice place to be.

Q: What are you proud of achieving in your career and what's next?

A: During my days at Crown, I learned the power of collaborative leverage. This is the exponential power created when individual parts of a network cooperate and work together to create and use common resources. When the 10 nodes of a network each contribute 2, the equation does not equal a total of 20 benefits. It is 2 to the 10^th power, which is 1024 benefits. 

When networks can put down their usual suspicions, fear and tendency to protect competitive advantage and recognize the power of collaboration, the results can be amazing. In the early days, even though Crown was a network of companies under common ownership, each branch still operated like a separate company. That is the agent-to-agent heritage that is built into the DNA of the international moving business. Each branch was still reluctant to share and contribute to common resources and the knee-jerk reaction was to sometimes think about what was best for my branch rather than what was best for our Group. I believe one of my best contributions to the Crown Worldwide Group was to, in a small way, help in breaking down those barriers and showing that the resultant collaborative leverage was actually much more beneficial in the end to each branch as well as the Group. 

Today, I apply those same principles to the industry, as a whole. The industry, in general, is experiencing a very challenging period of change. It is my opinion, that the business is not growing dynamically which means that companies are not getting more efficient, more competitive, and more flexible in adapting to our changing customer demands despite the clear need for it. 

Collaborative leverage is, therefore, more important today than ever before. The partnership that Mobility Exchange has developed with the International Association of Movers has a laser-sharp focus on this mission. That is to facilitate connectivity and cooperation within the industry in order to promote collaboration and efficiency.

Industry Insider

Q: How do you think the global mobility industry has changed over the years?

A: Part of the answer depends on which aspect of the mobility industry we are discussing. Moving services have, perhaps, not changed enough and the changes that have been made have been in reluctant response to the external business environment. So, in the case of moving services, the pace of change has been too slow and reluctant.

When we consider relocation services and outsourced global mobility management services, innovation has been more apparent. New service offerings based on market demand as well as a trend toward leveraging technology has marked those sectors. One of the most significant changes has been the aggregation of various mobility related services to a single outsourced provider. This has caused substantial changes in how mobility service providers view their customer relationships, reporting and pricing.

Q: What do you think is the primary thing hindering the global mobility industry's progress? 

A: I believe that external factors affect every industry. Some view these factors as hinderances and some view them as opportunities. So, my answer is… …it depends. Some companies are not hindered at all and are taking advantages of market opportunities through innovation, strategic expansion, strategic acquisition and vertically integrating their service offerings. 

Other companies view external factors as hinderances and view that their challenges are caused by these factors. When is the period where businesses in our industry and any other were described as having no external challenges?

Q: What is the most important strategic tip you can give to companies handling global mobility?

A: I believe that the greatest near-term opportunities relate to leveraging technology and collaboration. The industry is fragmented. While there are global corporations and alliances engaged in the mobility services industry, it is still primarily made up of small to medium sized independent enterprises that cannot make the significant investments necessary to leverage and implement technology properly. 

This is where industry associations have an opportunity to promote standards which can lead to pathways for companies to digitally connect the disparate systems used in our business. At the heart of every mobility transaction is information about the transferee and their sponsoring corporation which every separate stakeholder in the various mobility services transaction must access in order to meet service commitments. For too long, companies have guarded this information closely; forcing the transferee and the corporate to repeat the same story dozens of times in the course of managing a single relocation. 

The holy grail has to be a single, up to date data repository of the vital information required by all the service providers with specific information access and editing rights controlled by role-based security. This is the seamless service delivery along with information access that all global mobility services companies promise but have yet to deliver. 

I believe that the technology required is available today but we are held back by misplaced concerns and misunderstandings about competitive advantage, privacy and confidentiality. I am not suggesting that those concerns are not real, I am suggesting that technology exists to serve up the data and provide access while preserving competitive advantage and protecting privacy and confidentiality. 

While the opportunity is clear, there are few dynamic leaders in the global mobility industry that understand enough about technology to accelerate the changes needed. By this, I mean that we have talented, dynamic leaders in the industry. We have talented and skilled technologists. We have far too few that know enough about both to bridge the gap between the two disciplines.

Visionary Insider

Q: How can global mobility practices get better in the next 5 years?

A: I believe that we have not fully exploited technology as a tool to improve service delivery and to create new service offerings. It is starting to happen and there are some exciting developments including things like video surveys, digital inventories, data interchange and improvements in standardization. 

We all know that the end mission is to deliver a productive, well-settled-in transferee to their new destination – to make them feel welcome in their new home. As long as we keep our eyes on that end mission and innovate to improve that welcome, we will be on the right track.

Q: What more can be done to improve current global mobility practices to benefit talents on the move?

A: I believe that we are moving in the right direction of offering more freedom and flexibility in options to transferees. Most organizations have figured out that people are different and forever changing. The trend away from restrictive entitlements to creative options that allow the transferee more choice is the right one.

Q: What are the major developments you currently see happening in the industry, and how do you feel about them?

A: As I’ve suggested, this is a challenging period of change for the industry. I’m very much an optimist though. Any period of turmoil and change introduces opportunities and we have some very innovative companies and associations that are evolving to meet these challenges. The end result is that there will be stronger companies and associations that are geared toward delivering a much higher level of service to the moving public.

Either/Or

• Short-term or long-term assignment? – Long-Term
• Airbnb or serviced apartments? – Check them both
• Excel or global mobility software? – Global Mobility Software
• Lump-sum or flex-ben? – Flex-ben
• Facebook or LinkedIn? - LinkedIn
• Outlook or Gmail? - Outlook
• Taxi or Uber? - Uber
• iOS or Android? – iOS
• Mac or PC? - PC
• Computer or tablet? - Computer
• Work hard or play hard? – Work hard