City makes inroads as key transportation center (2)

"The eventual implementation of this solution could be a key success factor for the region and will help make the best use of its enormous business potential," Hanser said.

Copenhagen-based Maersk is a well-known player in the global logistics trade, with extensive links to major ports and harbors. However, most of its daily operations are now coordinated from the company's global logistics hub in Chengdu.

It was only in 2009 that the company stepped up its logistics activities by setting up the global service center and logistics-processing branch at the Tianfu Software Park in Chengdu, which has become the global hub for Maersk.

Damco, the logistics arm of Maersk, employs about 1,000 people in its new customer service center that occupies the building's bottom three floors. The Maersk Global Service Center, which provides the back-office functions for its group companies, is in the same building on the top two floors.

Among Maersk's five global service centers, which include three in India and one in Manila, the Chengdu center is the fastest-growing, providing customer-service documentation, online booking, online customer service with financing and accounting processes.

"Chengdu GSC has developed very quickly over the past two years. We will continue to grow the center, although it now already covers support for almost 40 percent of our exports globally," said Shao Wei, senior director of the Maersk GSC in Chengdu.

"We believe the Chengdu center will provide our global customers with better services and make our business more competitive," Shao added.

Apart from the impressive infrastructure it has lined up to attract global majors, Chengdu also provides multinational companies with an ideal opportunity to trim overall costs, and a footprint to the vastly untapped markets of western China.

Multinationals can cash in on such factors as talented workforce and an open investment environment. But the main attraction for most logistics companies is the excellent transport links the city has with other major destinations in China.

Chengdu is the fourth major air hub in China, with seven direct international flight connections and 12 code-sharing global links. By 2015, there will be at least 30 direct passenger and freight flights from Chengdu to major cities in the world.

Another factor that has helped industrialization is the "cluster approach", especially for shared service centers.

Major global companies like Accenture, DHL, Lafarge and Amazon rub shoulders with domestic companies like Alibaba Group Holding Ltd and Tencent Holdings Ltd to set up a robust chain of delivery and service centers.