Outsourcing – using third party providers to provide essential services or products – is not new. But in this period of great uncertainty and change it is rising as not just an overflow asset but as a long term solution to adding adaptive and flexible resources without investing heavily on in-house resources.
In our industry – transport and logistics – when many companies have had to put on ice entire fleets and furlough many staff, whilst still being subject to high business premises costs – it’s becoming a preferably decision for long term business planning.
Let’s take a few examples. For our e-commerce clients outsourcing the fulfilment and delivery means a massive reduction in costs, people and management – whilst adding an adaptable and flexible resources as long as your fulfilment partner is engaged in your business planning. This is where a great relationship with your supplier is essential. Discussion about future volumes and capacity are essential to enable both client and supplier to ensure scaling or contracting allocate resources is planned for.
Our fulfilment clients remove the need and hassle of having their own warehouse, inventory and warehouse management systems, fulfilment team, and despatch management. This can be replaced by minimal storage charges and a simple cost for picking, packing and despatching. At diamond we then include the post-despatch management and uniquely we also provide our very own logistics platform, despatchlab, to give all clients full visibility of all their inventory, stock, picks and despatches in real time – all integrated with all their online marketplaces.
Our classic delivery clients can reduce or eliminate the fixed headcount, vehicles and management of fleets and carriers by utilising our outsource solutions for same day courier and for management of their overnight and international deliveries. Again a great relationship is key – and particularly as most businesses have peak periods and more quiet ones the necessity to maintain resources at 100% is removed.
From our experience the KEY benefit of outsourcing is time and management savings and reducing scary fixed costs long term reducing business risk. Most companies’ specialist skill set is not logistics and fulfilment management. Delegating this to professionals who do this every day enables a substantial increase in efficiency, productivity and reducing delivery time and costs. This frees businesses to focus on their core objectives – product acquisition, marketing, sales, team leadership and finance. And in uncertain times reducing fixed costs and headcount whilst still being 100% able to deliver via outsourcing relieves companies of the future pressures of a high cost base.
In summary, the key benefits are:
- Expert/specialist advice and skill set
- Simplify your business planning
- Saving time and money
- Flexible resource
If you’d like to discuss how outsourcing might help your business please get in touch HERE
