Your guide to successful logistics management

Collaborative Post

The logistics department is the backbone of most retail businesses (especially online businesses), but if it isn't run well, you can experience a lot of problems.

Covid has led to a boom in online business, but how do you ensure that your customers constantly get their orders on on time?

Whether you’re a self published author trying to get books to your readers or a fashion designer shipping clothes to customers in other countries or a wine maker shipping wine globally, you will need to understand logistics, in order to get your products to your customers.

This post will cover how your logistics staff should be working with your vendors and customers in order to keep things running smoothly.

#1 Make your lead time a priority

When you're working with suppliers, it's important that you get your products to them on time, this is how you build trust. The logistics department always needs to be keeping an eye out for potential delays and problems to avoid them before they happen. In some instances, a delay may occur despite what you do - but this is where having relationships with multiple vendors comes into play! 

If there's a problem somewhere along the line between two of your vendors, then another one might have more luck coming through if given enough time. This way, even if something happens at the last minute (which will inevitably come up from time to time), you'll still have options open instead of being completely shut down by one vendor who didn't live up to expectations.

#2 Get warehouse processes sorted out

The warehouse is the other big part of your logistics department. If there aren't any processes in place for storage, packing and shipping/posting, then you'll have a lot more problems than just making sure that everything arrives on time! For example, if goods get damaged during transport, it's because they weren't packed right - which means not doing enough research before sending out the order. 

While this might seem like an honest mistake, with these kinds of mistakes happening often enough, it can quickly become negligent behaviour, if there’s no one accountable to make sure things are done correctly. Besides damages, this also leads to poor planning and late delivery of orders. This isn't necessarily something that will ruin relationships with customers or suppliers. Still, it can definitely lead to some bad feelings if you're trying to get the timing right for new product launches or other big initiatives.

#3 Have everything insured

Logistics can be complicated, and there's always the chance of something going wrong. This can be anything from dealing with an accident during transport to having your warehouse damaged in some way due to weather or other conditions outside of your control. You can also have your products insured in case something like a fire happens in your warehouse and your lose the stock or if you’re using your own transport to get things from point A to point B, you may want to find yourself car accident attorneys with top-notch experience, just in case something happens that needs some legal intervention. By getting insurance, you'll have protection against various kinds of risk.

#4 Have strong management in place

Its important to have a strong team in place - we can’t be everything in our business and logistics/ operations require a bit of time. So having someone to manage the entire logistics process when your business is in growth mode is extremely important.

Imagine having 1000 orders a day of books or clothes or wine and trying to manage all of that on your own and still run a business and do the marketing?

As your business grows, your role in the business will change, you may find yourself managing people with different skillsets and making sure everyone is working together and communicating effectively - even if you're dealing with multiple teams at once (such as different vendors).

So make sure you have a great team and a great manager to deal with the logistics.

Do you have a logistics strategy in place?

What additional advice can you give? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.