In today’s fever pitched, highly competitive business environment, many businesses are continually challenged to engage new and even varied Logistics Service Providers to enhance their businesses. How a business approaches these engagements can be the clear difference between total success, or complete failure.
Here is a list of five key factors that will ensure businesses will succeed whenever they engage a new Logistics Service Provider:
Both Sides MUST Fully Understand the Business Opportunity – While this sounds logical for any joint business arrangement, often times one side or the other will inadvertently, (or sometimes even deliberately), leave out important and critical details of their operation(s) in an effort to hopefully gain a competitive edge over the other party. This could simply be a shipper understating or overstating their actual shipping volumes to gain a pricing advantage. Or, it could be a service provider exaggerating their operational capabilities in an effort to secure the business and worry about the details later on in the process. When this occurs, the result for both parties will be total failure of the intended partnership.
Failure to Involve ALL Key Stakeholders – In any joint business arrangement there are key stakeholders up and down both organizations that have important roles in either the success or failure of these new business arrangements. These individuals or their teams can make or break any business partnership process either deliberately, if they do not fully buy in to the process, or inadvertently if they are not aware of all of the details of the business’ expectations. ALL of these key stakeholders MUST be involved from the initial discussions all the way through to final implementation, or again the intended business arrangement is headed for complete failure. Never underestimate the power of any stakeholder within a business even if they or their teams are considered too far down the food chain to have an impact on the outcome.
Failure to Listen – Often times individual team members involved in the initial partnership discussions are so keen on moving the process forward, they fail to listen, or to actually hear key comments made by “the other side.” Comments that most times will reveal loud and clear whether the intended partner is the right choice for the business or not. An old adage tells us that we have two ears and one mouth and therefore we should listen twice as much as we speak. However, this very sound advice is very often ignored. Sometimes when sales teams are involved in these discussions they will “oversell” a particular service or continually highlight specific key points they believe are critical to closing the business. And, sometimes when they do, the buyer, if they are listening intently, will get a clear signal that this company might not be the right fit for them. That is the time to walk away, before it’s too late.
Failure to Document ALL Processes – We all know it’s dangerous to ass-u-me, so don’t assume ANYTHING. With that being said, failure to completely document all of the expected processes will again result in failure. It’s the “devil is in the details” scenario. Taking the time to document ALL processes to gain assurances that both parties not only fully understand their roles in the intended business arrangement, but more importantly, that both sides can actually deliver on what is expected of them.
Failure to Integrate Systems- How many times have we heard the term “you cannot manage what you cannot measure” (too many we’re sure.) However, this advice is a key element for successful Logistics Service Provider partnerships that is often times overlooked. Certainly, all Logistics Service Providers, regardless of the services they offer, have the ability to provide certain statistics and reports. Shippers likewise should have the ability to provide complete shipping details to the logistics Service Provider. We say should because today, believe it or not, there are shippers that need help improving their processes and lowering their shipping costs, but they do not have the ability to provide even basic information about the products they ship, the volumes they actually ship or even the costs they are currently incurring. Sounds illogical and it is, but unfortunately it’s true. It’s like going to the doctor a telling the doctor “it hurts” but not telling the doctor where the pain is. While both parties again should have the ability to exchange data and/or reports, the real key to success is integrating both parties’ systems together. This will create a consistent flow of intelligent, real-time information between both parties ensuring everyone that all processes are working exactly as planned.
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