Martin Ellison, business development director, Elanders UK, explores how third-party logistics (3PLs) are tackling rising costs and inflationary pressure
With the impact of inflation and a hike in prices from food to everyday products, 3PLs can play a supporting role to customers when it comes to cutting costs, remaining profitable and safeguarding.
This can be achieved in the following ways by:
Offering a one-stop solution for supply chains in packaging, warehousing, transportation and order fulfilment.
Identifying gaps in the supply chain.
Utilising expertise, best practices and technologies that can be integrated into business processes to solve complex challenges and make the supply chain more agile and responsive in what can be an unpredictable market.
Tackling concerns that eCommerce businesses may currently face, including the cost of goods, utility bills, salaries and transportation. Understanding your customer operations will help to develop efficient supply chain strategies, which will naturally help to lower costs and enhance customer satisfaction.
Be challenging
It may sound obvious but customers should always be challenging their partners. At Elanders UK we look at how we can add value, address what our customers want to achieve, analyse what isn’t working and assess if we can fill the gap.
We offer a fully integrated solution, covering print and packaging, configuration, fulfilment, warehousing and global distribution. Ensuring that our customers are aware of all of our services is beneficial as it takes time and pressure away from them if we can deliver a service, they may not have thought of.
We operate to our core principles – delivering value, being agile and having honest discussions.
What are your customers’ aspirations?
This is important to consider. They may be looking to move into a new market, so our first question is always, can we help? The role of third-party logistics in supply chain management is to drive business growth by giving companies inroads to markets where they may not already have a presence. Being able to manage their products in a new market without having to spend money on warehousing and equipment can save money, as well as time learning about a new market.
Currently, we are talking to customers about sourcing materials for them. We have seen a 21% improvement in packaging goods for customers where we have helped to consolidate the supplier base at point of source, reduced time and shipping costs and, physically, in terms of space. Customers may not have the facilities to accommodate internal fulfilment and costs can be lowered in off-peak times.
Working in partnership
It is important to remember the relationship between a 3PL and its customer should be a partnership. One which enables business growth. If we are seeing a reduction in costs, potentially we can look to share our saving with a customer who is being impacted by costs.
Driving value and agility
Adding extra value is crucial to customers. The benefits of being part of Elanders Group is that we offer more flexibility. Customers have the best of both worlds by working with Elanders UK, for example, you have that localised angle combined with the benefits of a global operating business.
As we move towards 2024, working in partnership efficiently and effectively, remains key.
www.elanders.co.uk