Are you working with 3PL companies?
With a global market valued at $1,032 billion, working with third party logistics companies is a must if you want your business to stay on par with the competition. These companies aid in the shipping, fulfillment, and distribution of products. Services like these allow businesses like yours to succeed globally.
Because of their importance as a service, you must assist them in any way you can, too. It’s a great way to make sure shipping companies will have no issue handling your products.
We’ve prepared some tips for you to help improve your working relationship with shipping services. These will also help your business, modernizing it and preparing it for the future.
- Assess Your Current Operations
You wouldn’t know what to improve if you don’t look at your business’s current operations. See if you’re doing well or are falling behind your expected quota for the quarter. If it’s the latter, take the time to reallocate your resources to fill in any gaps in your performance.
While you’re at it, check the operations of the shipping services you’re surveying. and their goods in transit insurance When interviewing potential partners, ask to see their data charts for the year or quarter. Ask them for a list of their operations, too, so you can see what they handle and how they do so.
See if you can find gaps in their activities. These inconsistencies can prove to be challenges that hinder distribution along the line. It can lower your company’s overall productivity levels and cause deficiencies that set you back.
Don’t jump the gun, though. Gaps can mean inactivity, not inefficiency. It may be a time when a company they’re working with went out of business.
Ask them about the gaps you found and listen to what they have to say. Base your decision on whether you’ll partner up with them on this. Doing this avoids passing on the better companies who only partnered with doomed businesses.
- Train Your Communication Skills
Communication is the key to ensuring all parties are working well together. Most think that this comes naturally, but exceptional partnerships happen because of proper communication. Proper communication is only possible if you’ve trained your staff to do so.
Train them to establish reports and responsibilities clearly to all parties included. Doing so means telling others in your party what you’ve already relayed. There’s nothing worse than redundancies and the confusion it creates.
Redundancies lead to wasted resources and can cause conflicts between parties. When this happens, working well together will be impossible and you’ll need to find a new company to partner up with.
What’s great is that you can avoid this easily. All you need to do is assign someone to assign necessary data to your shipping partner. Doing so avoids redundancies since you only send the data once.
Providing this data is also a great way to show that you trust them. It helps build your relationship with whichever shipping service you’ve chosen, improving company logistics.
- Set Standards With Your Logistics Provider
Proper communication includes setting standards for shipping companies. Companies need to know what you expect of them. Doing so ensures you don’t have setbacks throughout the quarter.
You can communicate these expectations when defining a contract. Set milestones and provide them with goals to achieve by the end of each term. You can do this with the help of pitch decks, which you can learn about here.
Communicate these expectations regularly, too. 3PL companies benefit from these reminders so they can update their timelines. It’s a great way to avoid delays in shipments, protecting your brand from negative press.
As you do this, remember to set realistic expectations. It’s hard to handle company logistics and outsourcing won’t resolve anything overnight.
Know what’s impossible and expect reasonable results. Doing so improves collaborations and prevents other conflicts from arising.
- Adopt Compatible Technologies
When working with shipping companies, adopt technologies to make shipping management easier. Look up relevant platforms and integrate them into your business. Some technologies provide a host of features that can prove useful for you and your shipping partner.
Look for a platform that uses tracking tools. These tools are useful for all parties involved, including the customer. All parties can see the status of the delivery, giving the customer peace of mind and alerting your side should anything go awry.
Some platforms even provide consolidation features. These benefit your logistics partner by providing adequate information. Consolidation software can categorize deliveries, showing which packages share a similar route.
It informs couriers so they can deliver these packages all in one go. This saves time and resources by decreasing the number of back-and-forth trips made.
Look for platforms that offer cloud storage, too. You can use these to save customer data for easy access. You and your partners won’t have any trouble should a courier forget the delivery address of a client.
Adopt the technologies that your partner uses if possible. Using the same interface makes it easier for companies to work together. You also avoid having misunderstandings by using the same platform.
- Perform Regular Check-Ins
Check on your partner and see how they’re performing after a while. Consider these check-ins a form of auditing. See how they’re handling their end of the deal and see how you can aid them.
See how they’re managing the deliveries for your customers. If it’s satisfactory, then there’s no need to intervene. Should any delays or mix-ups happen, it’s time to step in.
Take this as a proactive approach to business and shipping management. By doing so, you prevent minor issues from becoming worse. It prevents logistical disasters and helps you save face before it’s too late.
Work Better With Third Party Logistics Companies Today
Third party logistics companies will appreciate how well they work with you when you follow these tips. Improve all business processes and distribute your products with ease. Dominate the global market with the help of shipping services today!
Are you looking for more tips to improve company logistics? Check out more of our guides and posts to learn all you can. See what else you can do to futureproof your business today!
Hemant Kumar is a project manager at Tridindia with more than nine years of commendable experience in writing about LMS, translation, and IT. His unmatched talent and passion for digital marketing gave him the opportunity to work as a multi-tasking project manager at TridIndia’s sister company, Link Building Corp. Today, he contributes to the world by imparting knowledge on SEO, link building and internet marketing etc., that helps business owners grow their online business.
