10 Tips for Reducing Supply Chain Logistics Costs

The following are 10 tips for reducing supply chain logistics costs:

1. Engage a Freight broker like Freight People, who is able to advise you on the best way to manage your logistics based on your freight profile. Freight brokers can advise on which logistics companies to use where and when, enabling you to focus on your core business.
   
   
2. Consolidate your freight carriers. Consolidation will help you to reduce costs and save time through efficiency gains, as well as ensure a single point of contact for all freight queries. Freight People can help you with this.
   
   
3. Eliminate manual data entry and automate as much of the process as possible. This will save time, as well as reduce costly errors in the supply chain. 
   
   
4. Enable real time electronic data sharing between your supply chain, including manufacturers, distributors, retailers and customers. Through having coordinated supply chain information companies can save time and reduce errors, whilst getting a single view of critical information.
   
   
5. Take advantage of Drop-shipping, whereby the supplier will ship finished products direct to the retailers’ customer, cutting out any distribution centers in the middle. This will help save on costs, as well as enable faster delivery to the end customer.
   
   
6. Gain visibility of your freight performance through regular reporting and continuous improvement. Work with your freight management company to ensure you see the right reports, executive dashboards and have regular business reviews. Visibility of the supply chain will enable inefficiencies to be reduced.
   
   
7. Extend your payment terms. When negotiating or signing up to long-term contracts, aim to get the best payment terms possible to help with working capital.
   
   
8. Focus on your core competency and align your logistics strategy around this. If you are focused on low price, then the focus of your logistics should be price. If you are focused on agility and getting your goods to your retailers faster than your competition, then the focus of logistics should be speed not price. This will ensure you have the right logistics for your company strategy.
   
   
9. See your freight providers as your partners rather than just another service. Work with an organisation that will see you as a partner in delivering your company to the marketplace – rather than just another project. You want an organisation that can share best practices, emerging trends and new technologies. Freight People operates in this fashion, working with our customers to ensure their logistics solution meets their company strategy.
   
   
10. Ensure the freight company you engage with has the responsiveness and qualified capacity to help you with any last minute urgent requests – as this is where companies often end up spending a fortune on freight. You want to have absolute confidence they can help you with that 4pm order on a Friday afternoon, otherwise any savings you may make on the above points will be lost while you spend hours trying to negotiate a last minute transport quote.