Finding a good logistics partner is crucial today to stay competitive. It influences the functioning of your supply chain and is strongly connected to customer satisfaction and therefore to your success as a business.
But what are the qualities every logistics service provider should bring in today’s environment, a world that changes fast and is often unpredictable?
Digitalization, flexibility and efficiency. These three aspects should be integrated into the working culture of your logistics partner. In the following, we show in what form this is possible and what you should pay attention to.
Digitalization
Digitalization is one of the main challenges for today's businesses. A good logistics partner should implement this aspect in his offer.
First of all, your logistics partner should use a WMS (Warehouse Management System) for internal processes. This system should be able to link to your own software and shop systems which ensures fast communication between your business and the logistics partner. Fast communication = fast processing of data and therefore happy customers.
Real-time inventory visibility helps you to keep track of what is happening in the warehouse at any time. By having this continuous overview, you can effectively avoid bottlenecks and optimize your buying processes.
You may even be able to reduce your stocks by better evaluating the movement of your goods. This can be achieved by receiving summarized data on a regular basis through a full-featured information system to which your logistics partner grants you access.
Lastly, all data representing logistics processes should be easily available for you and your employees, optimally via a web-app or easy-to-use software.
Flexibility
Flexibility is very important in today's fast changing environment. Crises like Covid-19 show how important it can be to quickly react to unexpected events. A good logistics partner should therefore be able to offer you the most flexible service possible.
The first aspect are fluctuations such as on promotion days (Black Friday, Cyber Monday etc.), Christmas but also more unforeseeable events like a crisis. You should always be able to scale your warehousing space and services up or down flexibly according to your current needs.
This bring us to the next point: you should only pay for what you are actually using. The contract with your logistics service provider should include flexible billing, optimally on a per-day basis, and no minimum contract length.
Furthermore your needs might change according to your clients, big projects that come in or new opportunities. That’s why being able to change locations flexibly without high set-up cost and efforts is a very important point.
Efficiency
In order to guarantee the efficiency of your partnership, your logistics partner should meet some criteria.
A good point can be former experiences with a company like yours, ideally on a project of similar scope and complexity. It makes it easier for your logistics service provider to understand your needs and to anticipate problems.
Finally, your logistics partner should propose an intelligent and personalized service rather than standardized process design. This helps adapting the service to the needs of your company and the specifications of your project.
Another efficiency booster are automated processes in the warehouse. There are some broadly tested and approved technologies existing already. Below you find an example of a warehouse automation system which is deployed in several of our partner warehouse sites.
For Warehousing1, digitalization, flexibility and efficiency are the three core values a good logistics service provider should bring. Thus we incorporate them in our own corporate culture, in all customer and partner processes, and use them as a key criterion in the selection of our partner warehouses.
If you have any further interrogations or need help in your quest for the right logistics partner, the Warehousing1 team is always happy to answer any questions and provide advice.
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