Ian
The
success of an online business depends severely on its logistics
strategy. Let’s look at logistic decisions that have helped online
businesses.
Plan
B
Let’s
say you run an e-commerce site that sells bags. Online sales is a
great idea. From the customer’s perspective, there are several
advantages. But if you want to match up to the customer’s
expectations, you need to make sure your logistics is perfect in
order to help achieve customer satisfaction. The bag needs to reach
the customer soon enough. There is a critical need to be hyper-fast
and build an environment to meet the expectations of clients. Find a
fast, efficient means of handling products. So, here the most
important tip is to have a very efficient Plan B for every single
potential mishap that you foresee in the logistics chain. Develop a
special “finger print” for each of your products; some are
sensitive to spoilage, some are fragile electronics and others
require more human labor. For every such occurrence, you need an
alternate plan. In order to react swiftly and decisively, you need
technology in place. You need a proper communication channel to aid
the plan.
Technology
to the rescue
If
there is scope for automation somewhere, go ahead and automate it.
Many organizations still rely on “tribal knowledge” for
information, but even the best memories fail. Manual processes are
error prone, however good they are. Automate the supply chain and
keep everyone in the chain informed about real time data. If the
shipping partner doesn’t have to wait for a call to bring his pick
up vehicle to your place, that’s one degree of complexity down. The
orders that flow in online can be automated straight to the
warehouse. They can start packaging the product right away and wait
for the freight pick up. Technology is linking vendors to customers
and customers to shippers through an interlinked web that promotes
the sort of fast, adaptable response that sets a business ahead of
its competitors.
Optimizing
cost, service and performance
Within
the supply chain, there is the need to optimize service and cost
performance. There are tools for this but in the end it’s all about
delivering low cost and great service. For this, we need to gain
end-to-end visibility of the network and analyze service and cost
performance. And very often, companies decide to partner with a third
party logistics provider (3PL) which has the people, processes and
technology needed to execute, gain visibility, track and report cost
and service performance. 3PL is a great idea if outsourcing is what
you have in mind.
