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Cadre Whitepapers | ||
The Modern Logistics Service ProviderA case for expanding the scope of your warehouse operations and connecting to the rest of the worldBy Kevin Michel Principal, Michel Distribution Services This paper discusses a broad range of important topics for third-party logistics (3PL) service providers. It identifies new technologies that are available to enable activities such as warehouse operations control, web-based order entry and information delivery, call-center order entry, voice-enabled data access, activity billing and transportation management. Your warehouse is the center of your universe. Every day you receive products, put them away, count them, pick them, and ship them out the door. After that you review what happened, report to clients, bill them, and get paid. You work behind the scenes on behalf of your clients to make things happen so that their customers are supplied with the right products in the right quantities at the right time. Then, and only then, your client is happy. Each of your clients has a unique set of requirements because their customers may have different order processing, shipping and service demands. As you grow with more clients and more of their customers, your supporting cast cannot possibly remember every rule for every customer. You do not have a cast of thousands, nor the budget to support such a cast. However, your clients expect you to deliver new services when they need them. Your client hired you because you have a special talent to get hundreds of tasks handled efficiently and reliably. Since you have done a good job in the past, chances are your clients will ask for additional services. Managing the receiving, putaway, inventory counting and picking processes will not be enough. You will be asked to take orders, communicate with vendors electronically, provide custom web interfaces, evaluate inventory flow, select the lowest cost carriers, ship with compliant labeling and many other tasks of increasing complexity. Your sales team will continue to find new opportunities for you to grow your business and make more money. However, you will only be able to take advantage of these opportunities if you have the systems and technology to satisfy the increasing demands of your customer base.  |
