Companies can outsource many parts of their business and to great success.
It enables them to focus on growth, sales and promoting their business without the worries.
Transport is one area where it can go incredibly well and save you money or go extremely badly and be a complete waste of time for all involved.
When you look at outsourcing your deliveries, what else do you look at? For many, they only look at the costs they save.
They miss the costs saved with becoming greener.
An example of this comes from one of our blue chip clients.
They regularly deliver into the warehouses where their goods are sorted and loaded to the correct vehicles.
Driver are trained to bring back the packaging and do so.
At the end of the week all the packaging is delivered to the central warehouse to be reused.
The company didnt expect this to be part of the service and we calculated the recycled packaging that could be reused saved them £8k a month! for them it was an incredible bonus to come from outsourcing their transport.
When looking at providers you need to be honest with amounts.
Yes, you get discounts with bigger quantities but how does it reflect on your company if you start to lie about the amounts that need delivering? You look less trustworthy.
Give examples of deliveries from 'this time last year' based on your actual sales figures for the previous year.
Again, you need to be honest with the weights of the items and their fragility.
Remember, two man teams, safer delivery techniques are not a substitute for good packaging.
Companies in the past when outsourcing also decide to make the false economy of cutting back their packaging,increasing the likelihood of returns.
Talk to your sales team and make sure your delivery data is 'clean'.
Companies move floors, move two doors along and round the corner all the time.
Make sure the sales team update the delivery data, adding notes about where delivery entrances are.
A good delivery company will call to get the correct details anyway, but it makes life easier for everyone if the data is correct in the first place.
Again the correct data helps to eliminate the need for returns and decreases the likelihood of failed deliveries.
Talk to more than one company when looking to outsource your transport but remember if you buy solely on price, you will lose out on many added benefits and run the risk of having no insurance cover or being underinsured.