Make the cold calls more about the potential customers than about your company. Building your own delivery team comes with costs, including hiring drivers and buying delivery vehicles. But eliminating the middleman means the profits you earn stay within your business. The manufacturing process may be further divided into sub-tasks such as assembly, testing, inspection, and packaging.
Businesses receive inbound shipments, send outbound shipments, and receive reverse shipments when a customer needs to return or exchange a product. Planning well in advance, based on up-to-date forecasts, means that all delays and resource wastage can be eliminated.
How to Get More B2B Sales Leads for Your Growing Business
By 2024, retailers will be facing a 140-million-square-foot storage shortage, expected to increase the cost of warehousing. Read more about specialized global logistics here. Diamond-giant De Beers uses blockchain technology to track stones from the point they are minded right up to the point when they are sold to consumers. This ensures the company avoids ‘conflict’ or ‘blood diamonds’ and assures the consumers that they are buying the genuine article. The transparency of blockchain is also crucial to allow consumers to know they are supporting companies who they share the same values of environmental stewardship and sustainable manufacturing.
Agility is the first pillar of our strategy, and in practical terms it means ability to respond in real-time to market expectations. Our Sales and Operations planning strategy allows us to predict market volatility and to increase our industrial agility accordingly, so that we can provide an optimal service to our customers. This involves, for example, the growing use of data or the creation of Demand Sensing Anticipated Planning, which enables L’Oréal to forecast sales thanks to the power of data and artificial intelligence. Hotaling & Co., an importer-distiller in San Francisco, is exploring the possibility of setting up overseas, third-party warehouses to ensure it has product ready to ship direct to distributors as longer lead times continue. A 2021 survey by Deloitte and the Materials Handling Institute (MHI) industrial body found that reducing risk is a priority for many supply chain professionals. An additional 54% of those surveyed said they were substantially increasing their investment in cloud computing and storage to make the supply chain more resilient.
Reverse Logistics vs. Traditional Logistics
If you choose to use the driver app, OptimoRoute offers real-time tracking and analytics of each driver’s performance. If your customers know exactly when the delivery is coming in advance, they’ll be available when the package arrives. Each route considers driver service areas, delivery time windows, vehicle capacity, and other real-world variables. Once you’ve set up your driver settings (like service areas, schedules, break times) and vehicle settings (truckload capacity, capabilities), OptimoRoute takes care of the rest. Shipping is the act of physically transporting goods or materials between locations.
Strategies to Optimize Reverse Logistics
With the entire control in one dashboard, fleet operations can be monitored at any given time by the fleet manager. An efficient system enables streamlined delivery and shipping by empowering the business with predictive analytics and increased flexibility. The end-to-end control ensures on-time deliveries and complete transparency for all stakeholders, including the customers. By analyzing historical data and market trends, AI is enhancing decision-making and improving inventory management.
In some cases, late or incorrect deliveries may be due to factors outside of your control. For example, if you’re shipping items by truck and there’s a traffic jam on the highway, that’s going to cause delays. Follow these tips and you’ll be on your way to improved accuracy and efficiency. First, ensure that your team is well-trained and familiar with the processes involved in documenting inventory in the first place. In a competitive logistics industry, it’s important to have a clear understanding of the most common problems companies face. By addressing these issues head-on, you can put yourself in a much better position for success.