Business logistics is important to every organization, regardless of scope, industry or profession. Learn more about how fleet managers can better utilize logistics management to transport goods and services from point A to point B.
This is the process of transporting goods from one major location, such as a manufacturing warehouse, to their destination. This movement process constitutes modern commercial logistics and keeps your logistics business running smoothly.
Logistics and supply chain
What is logistics and supply chain?
Supply chain management and logistics management are two topics that are often used interchangeably, as both concepts are core to running a successful business. While supply chain includes every element from production to delivery, logistics is just one element of the larger concept of supply chain.
Let's unpack this further.
A supply chain is a network of businesses, organizations, and others that work together to produce and distribute popular products. Logistics, on the other hand, is responsible for the safe movement of supplies and finished goods from location A to location B, including transportation and warehousing.
Logistics also includes two processes:
- Collect data on every process involved in a company's distribution
Allocate resources such as human resources, materials, equipment, and capital to the different steps required for the movement of goods
Although logistics is an easier concept to understand than the supply chain as a whole, don’t let its simplicity fool you, logistics plays a huge role in many steps within it to keep it functional and beneficial to the business.
- Business logistics: what it is and how it works
Business logistics refers to the workflow and supervision of goods during transportation, whether from supplier to business or from business to customer. The key concept here is to manage these processes as a unified system.
You don't have to manually manage and oversee this process. Logistics management systems can handle inbound elements such as purchasing and arranging the transportation of products, parts, materials, and finished goods inventory from suppliers to a company's warehouse or manufacturing facility. Outbound elements such as the flow of items through a company's production lines, warehouses, and ultimately to customers.
Both elements require logistics managers to implement additional management techniques such as:
- transportation management
- warehouse management
- Fleet management
- Order processing
- Inventory control
- Supply and demand forecast
- Manage third-party logistics (3PL) service providers
Logistics management systems can take over these different management departments and automatically collect and process information as needed. Give logistics managers real-world tasks, such as ensuring shipped supplies arrive safely and intact, and working to gain positive feedback from customers.
How can enterprise logistics management improve profits?
Business logistics management earns profits and trade for businesses by exchanging goods and services, making logistics the backbone of any business. Without financial gain and trade, virtually no transactions, transactions, profits, and ultimately business would occur.
But if done correctly, enterprise logistics management can make an organization leaner and more profitable over time. Provide broader visibility into the movement of goods and items from production to consumption, identifying infrastructure and operational practices that help or hinder the smooth movement and distribution of goods
While this process is smooth, it can reveal cracks in any business's current workflow. It can also tell employees which aspects of their responsibilities are being handled well and which areas require new or updated systems. To ensure that "cracks" do not occur again, a set of inbound and outbound domains should be followed to ensure efficient logistics handling.
Seven Pillars of Effective Logistics
- purchase ingredients
Material sourcing is more than just finding the cheapest supplier of raw materials. Logistics includes calculating and managing factors such as late delivery delays, additional service costs, additional fees, increased transportation costs due to distance or regulatory environment, and warehousing costs.
Going the extra mile to find the right supplier for any material also requires understanding how these factors will impact overall operating costs. This process is called "strategic sourcing."
- transportation
Fleet managers should pay special attention to this component of logistics planning because it is at the heart of logistics management.
In order for transportation to play a role in logistics planning, first, companies need to choose the best mode of transportation - there are only three freight options: air, water or land. They then select the best carrier based on cost, speed and distance, including optimizing routes that require multiple carriers.
If goods are moving globally, shippers need to understand customs, tariffs, compliance and any relevant regulations, while transportation and fleet managers must use dashboards and analytics software to record and track shipments, manage billing and report on performance.
- order fulfillment
In order for items to reach their destination smoothly, the correct items must be "picked" from the warehouse according to the customer's order, packaged and labeled correctly, and then shipped to the customer's home or collection location as planned. Once delivered, order fulfillment is created, which is the core of logistics sequencing in customer fulfillment.
- warehousing
Both short-term and long-term storage are a common part of logistics planning, so common in fact that a new process - Warehouse Management System (WMS) - was created to help logistics planners optimize warehouse space by taking into account the specific conditions of perishable goods, As well as asking about facilities such as cold storage, docking facilities, and transportation options such as proximity to rail lines.
In addition, WMS can also infer goods that are scheduled to be transported and placed at the front of the warehouse. While items with lower demand are stored in the back. Perishable goods are frequently rotated so the oldest items are shipped out first to ensure efficient warehouse operations.
- Demand Forecast
Logistics meets inventory demand forecasts. This ensures that businesses never run out of high-demand products or materials or stockpile items they don’t need. This saves businesses money, time, and products that may have expired due to poor sales. By using demand forecasting, logistics managers can determine exactly how much of each product they need and when.
- Inventory management
Based on past trends or seasonal behavior, companies can plan for increased demand for certain products and meet demand as required. In turn, companies can better determine when to offer discounted prices for items that are not in high demand and incentivize free capital to be reinvested in items that are in higher demand. This way, they can also maintain higher profits and turn inventory faster.
Because stores differ from each other, good inventory management enables a business to decide to ship a product that is not performing well in one store or region to another store or region where demand is strong, rather than incurring losses by discounting pricing to get rid of inventory. Or create waste by throwing away products. Logistics is key to moving inventory to get the best price possible.
- Supply Chain Management (SCM)
A supply chain is essentially a series of transactions. If logistics fail, supply chains fail and transactions grind to a halt. To explain better, during the pandemic, aisles in multiple countries
What is transportation logistics management?
Transportation management is a part of logistics management and, therefore, it is considered one of the most important aspects of distribution elements and a factor that determines the success or failure of a company.
Since transportation and logistics management are very similar, it's not unusual for them to have the same primary goal, which is to move goods efficiently and effectively within a company's supply chain.
Ultimate goal: physical delivery
Transportation logistics focuses on the successful movement of goods from one location to another. It's one thing to plan for safe, on-time delivery, but it's quite another to cross the terrain and deliver the physical item without loss, damage, or attempted theft.
In order to meet delivery deadlines quickly without facing any problems, it is best to know about the shipping features. The functions of transportation services can be divided into three important areas:
- operations management
- Vehicle and fleet organization
- infrastructure management
- The best terrain for your business
Depending on what the shipper is transporting, the size of the item, and the value of the item, different modes of transportation may be suitable for the item; however, by comparing the different terrains, it can be seen that of all the different modes of transportation, road transportation is the most popular in the trucking industry. Commonly used popular methods for the following reasons
It is the most cost-effective of all modes of transportation
- You can enjoy fast and scheduled delivery (1-3 days delivery)
- Flexible services
- Easily track freight and fleet vehicles
- Provide full door-to-door delivery service
- The most economical means of transportation
Why is proactive management critical?
Order fulfillment is just one of many aspects of transportation and logistics management. There are several other reasons why taking initiative in this area of your business is crucial. As mentioned above, transportation management is critical to the overall supply chain and business success.
Let’s take a closer look at a few reasons in favor of active management:
Optimize inventory processes
When you manage transportation logistics effectively, your entire supply chain can run smoothly. This will allow you to keep a close eye on your inventory and manage it accordingly, especially if shipping technology is used. As a result, your warehouse's operational efficiency will increase, delivery times will shorten, and storage costs will decrease.
environmental sustainability
As your logistics approach becomes more streamlined and uses the terrain that best suits your business practices, another benefit is reducing your carbon footprint. The transportation industry is notoriously emissions-heavy, so every small step toward reducing emissions is worth celebrating.
Additionally, efforts to reduce air pollution will attract customers who want to work with companies that take their social responsibilities seriously. Optimizing your shipping processes will simultaneously reduce your environmental impact while increasing customer satisfaction.
Some significant benefits of logistics management
- increase awareness
With business logistics management, logistics managers gain a strategic and more precise view of the distribution and transportation process. It is important to pay attention to the steps taken in the initial stages of product creation, such as front-end design, testing, and product production. While these are vital processes that are critical to solidifying a brand’s market share, they should not take away from time pushing products into a business’s supply chain in a timely, efficient and cost-effective manner.
- cut costs
Intelligent enterprise logistics planning can help logistics managers cut many previously overlooked transportation and warehousing expenses. Through programs such as fleet management software, inventory management and demand forecasting, companies can customize more strategic inbound and outbound shipping schedules, routes, fleet vehicle maintenance and more. This allows managers to allocate savings from efficient spending and money-saving methods elsewhere.
Key indirect costs reduced through commercial logistics efforts include:
– Storage and inventory holding calculations
– Procurement costs
– production cost per unit
– Expenditure on fixed assets, such as warehouses, vehicles, etc.total supply chain spend
At the same time, business logistics continues to improve:
– cash flow
– order fulfillment rate
– Delivery time
– net profit
- Improve customer experience and increase customer satisfaction
Among all the different options for businesses to deliver their products, most customers prefer home delivery. With this delivery option, customers can enjoy secure payment options, quality goods or services upon arrival, and save on fuel and travel costs to the nearest delivery location.
To better meet customer needs, the delivery process should be a fast and straightforward experience, and as a customer, there’s nothing worse than not knowing where your package is or when it will arrive. Prompt and punctual arrival, well-organized communication channels and undamaged goods are key factors that influence customer satisfaction and guarantee positive feedback on the overall delivery service.
When your organization fails to meet these delivery expectations, customer satisfaction can suffer significantly. However, logistics managers can prevent this from happening with the help of business logistics.
- increase profit
Efficient logistics management provides you with reliable transportation and business insights into your operations and customer relationships. This information can then be used to improve order fulfillment rates and therefore profits. With fleet management software, fleet data, route optimization and other management programs such as proactive vehicle tracking, managers can minimize operating costs and ensure supply chain synchronization.
What are the implications for fleet management?
Poor logistics planning will, at best, only temporarily impact a company's bottom line. At worst, it can cause considerable damage. Since logistics is considered as the physical manifestation of the transaction, without logistics, cash flow cannot be transferred from buyer to seller, resulting in production halts and huge losses in products and profits, ultimately leading to poor customer satisfaction and declining sales among customers.
Fortunately for businesses, managers can use logistics management software to help businesses and fleets make the best decisions, such as calculating optimal routing and shipping decisions, controlling costs, protecting investments, and tracking the flow of goods.
Logistics best practices vary depending on the nature of the business and its product decisions, but the process is always complex. Automation is the key to efficiency. The software can also often automate processes such as:
- Choose shippers based on rate fluctuations or skills
- Print shipping labels
- Transactions are automatically entered into the financial ledger and balance sheet
- Order Shipper Pickup
- Record receipts and receipt signatures
- Help with inventory control
- This software can do a lot of things instantly. Modern logistics management, with the help of technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT), enables managers to find new revenue streams and increase delivery profitability. Of course, these goals can be achieved without the use of technology, but these methods allow companies to achieve higher standards of logistics management and delivery efficiency.
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