THIRD-PARTY LOGISTICS PROVIDERS NEED REAL-TIME INFORMATION, KPI REPORTING AND SOFTWARE THAT WILL DELIVER SCALABILITY AS FOUNDATIONAL COMPONENTS FOR BUSINESS GROWTH.
Every industry has its unique challenges and hurdles to overcome. Third-Party Logistics (3PL) provider deals with a variety of industries including retailers, manufacturers, and retailers. Providers must be the middleman for any and all incoming challenges. Staff must deal with this while being extremely organized, efficient and reliable. A 3PL has their own individual challenges they need to monitor as well, to provide excellent service to their partners. These are the top three challenges facing 3PL’s we’ve been exposed to and offered solutions:
1. REAL-TIME INFORMATION
Strong communication is essential for the success of a 3PL company to efficiently deliver their partners deliveries and shipments. When dealing with various partners and logistics companies, proper communication tools and software ensure the flow of accurate information and transparency. Communication is a broad term, but it comes down to:
- Maintaining real-time fleet information
- Properly managing deliveries
- Allowing clients to extend item visibility to their customers
- Automating administrative tasks
2. KPI REPORTING
How are you able to ensure security and success rates to your partners without proper reporting and analytics? Analytics offer your customers full reporting on delivery times, ETA’s, damages, delays and comparison rates. Reporting will not only make you more reliable but help your company organize itself for the best fleet and processes available.
3. SCALABILITY
Are your processes stiff, inflexible and difficult to grow? Having a lack of scalable software for your company makes retaining new and larger customers nearly impossible. Having all the tools you need to support more shipments, growing fleets and long-distance travel is crucial to maintaining a scalable business. Ensuring technical solutions will provide you with the proper supply chain visibility, reporting and customization to grow and scale your business.
The 3PL industry is a key player in the logistics field, dealing with an abundance of internal and external challenges in their day to day roles. Having proper communication, reporting and scalable processes will allow you to be a competitive industry leading player, with the ability to take on the role of the majority of logistics requirements.