Imagine this scenario: your customer has an urgent shipment but he has to wait for it since you are unable to rush to fulfill it. Your delivery takes just few days more than what was expected by your customer but it could mean a huge upset for them.
Such standard of service today is unthinkable. Chances are your customer may jump to a competitor who can work it out quicker and end the relationship with you. You may even lose your customer due to your inability to fulfill their demand.
Today shipping speed is everything and so is fulfilling customer demands. Customers want their shipments sooner than ever, creating some major challenges for freight and logistics service providers.
The days of delays and cost overruns are gone. The average time shipment delivery has dropped substantially on top of an unprecedented increase in demands for specialized services and many a time customers are unwilling to pay extra for the services demanded.
Faster delivery fulfilment has become the new normal, and that makes life more than a little tedious for freight and logistics companies.
Let’s explore some key reasons why and how you can find ways of working more efficiently:
- Likelihood of Mistakes
The freight business has become a lot more intense and demanding. To fulfill customer demands, speed and agility are prerequisites. The key to faster and efficient process is elimination of mistakes. Since there are many stakeholders involved this raises the difficulty quotient, increasing chances for mistakes. Mistakes not only negatively impact customer satisfaction, but also increase your cost which cuts into margins.
- Complexity of Customer Demands
Another challenge is the increasing complexity of customer demands. Odd cargo quantity and sizes, special shipment needs and urgency of delivery increase cost and compliance work. You either have to find a way to work more efficiently or you’ll face the consequences which is bad for your business. It’s that simple.
- Lack of Transparency
Transparency across the organization is vital to successful execution of day-to-day work in freight business. Transparency across departments and across an organization’s hierarchy ensures speedy decision-making and prevents delays in work fulfillment.
If you’re struggling with these challenges, it’s probably time to go for an ERP system that is capable of meeting the demands of your business. You need to invest in a technology that can keep pace with the market demands.
An advanced ERP system can help eliminate mistakes by automating processes and minimizing human efforts. Systems come with inbuilt intelligence and tools to help you avert potential setbacks that could delay work. It streamlines the process and reduces the complexity of your operations and the potential for mistakes.
Customers will continue to expect speedy shipping and impose tougher demands. They won’t accept a situation where delivery time increases in line with the complexity of the shipment. In such cases there is always the temptation to increase your speed by adding more people to the task. However the process will still be inefficient no matter how speedily you operate it or how many people you involve. In fact it’s likely to become worse. Also, adding more people is only going to affect your margin.
An ERP system integrates your various business processes. Without that integration, you’ll have little to no chance of fulfilling your obligations within the given deadlines. When you have a tight turnaround time you simply can’t afford to waste your time in grappling with inter-organizational inefficiencies and high manpower costs. Integration between processes is important if you expect to fulfil obligations on time and increase efficiency while keeping costs low. With the right ERP solution in place you can have sweeping improvement in your business and customer service capabilities.
