If your business runs on delivering goods to the customer, then you may have, at some point, relied on others to do it for you. As demand grows beyond capability, outsourcing your fulfilment services is a common step for businesses to take. But as that business grows, the cost-effectiveness of outsourcing might come into question. The question you have to ask is: is your business ready to deliver the goods?
Can you guarantee customer satisfaction?
A lot of different things factor into customer satisfaction as far as delivery goes. Missed or late deliveries due to poor driver and poor shipping room staff productivity will be the cause of many a complaint. Damaged items will cost you money. You need to make sure that you create an efficient, safe delivery room with the right packaging items for each kind of goods. More important still is using GPS and long-range communication technology to ensure your drivers are using the best routes and batching parcels in trucks to make as much from a single trip as you can.
Can you handle the costs?
The fleet is going to cost you money. It’s not just about buying the vehicles, but also about keeping them fuelled and maintained in great detail to ensure that a journey is never interrupted. You need to get cost-effective. This means getting directly in touch with wholesale providers, not retailers, for your stock of replacement parts and red diesel drums. It also means tracking your inventory and recognizing your needs to stock efficiently. It’s important to never run out of the resources you need. However, another issue is over-stocking, which means you could be spending money on well-maintained storage space holding items you just aren’t using.
Will you need new people?
With the delivery system comes a need for added skills. Recruiting logistics experts, drivers and delivery room staff isn’t just an investment in money. It means taking on new human resources responsibility, from ergonomics in the delivery process to developing safety on the road policies. If the business is going to grow to accommodate your own delivery services, it needs to accommodate the people that will carry out those services, too.
Can you work it flexibly?
One of the greatest mistakes in taking care of deliveries is failing to anticipate the seasonality of your business. In production and sales, you might be prepared for seasonal ups-and-downs. But those demands get even more strenuous in fulfillment. You are going to need to ensure that you can find the temporary workers, as well as the leased vehicles, to deal with deliveries when demand gets too high. At the same time, you need to be aware that buying and hiring new people permanently during these times will only mean that for the rest of the year, you’re paying for resources you’re not using.
There comes a time when businesses rely on an outsourced service so much that they could just as easily bring it in-house and spend less money. Your delivery system is no different. You just have to ask yourself if you handle the burden.
