Are you looking forward to becoming a master of logistics, handling freight management with increased efficiency? If that happens to be the case and you need to be able to handle whatever comes your way, then you will need to be fully aware of a few things along the way. The following tips will give you a few ideas you can use in your efforts, so you can get things rolling:
Designing a flawless business plan
Freight Management will be a far easier task when you know how it all meets in these things. Design a good business plan to have all details figured into the cost of your office, equipment, and necessary software into your long-term business goals. Such a plan will make sure you have better business opportunities in the long run. This absolutely necessary step toward ensuring your business will help it last. To do so you will need to get rid of any filler language in your business plan – not only does this waste time and space but it will pretty much get you nowhere. Be direct, plan, and get to the point of what you want to get across quickly. Be realistic with your goals, consider the challenges ahead, and consider both the incoming challenge and opportunities you’re going for. Ensure your business plan has the backing of images, charts, graphs and more statistical data you can use to bring it to life. Make sure you stay away from templates if you can and do your best to keep a creative edge on what the plan looks like.
Using smart phones to your advantage
There are plenty of mobile apps capable of helping you with freight management in the long run, becoming an invaluable tool to help with your business analysis. You can find GPS tracking , confirmation apps and delivery logs, but there are even more specific apps that track a number of other options, such as GPS tracking efficiency, for example. Keeping in touch with the stats will allow you to micromanage your business with greater ease. There are a number of possibilities out there that give you a chance to keep track of multiple LTL carriers, brokers, creation of a bill of lading, shipping labels, pickup scheduling, reporting, tracking, API and more.
Using Transportation Management System/Software
Mobile apps are excellent about some tasks, but they are still inferior to the freight management software, or often referred to as a transportation management system, and its capabilities. Solutions like this will help lower the number of manual tasks, optimising your business and making consolidating shipments and keeping track of multiple shipments far easier in comparison.
Being aware of locations
When you have your business in mind and you want to succeed sustainably, do you have expansion in mind? Much like it is in war, business is a battlefield on its own and expansion means gaining ground on the local and international market. However, some locations are more strategic than others and thus they have more value than others. A good way to look for clients abroad is to look at the list of fastest growing countries with demand for food, vehicles, moving furniture, relocation, housing, beverages and more. Just like a removal service or movers in general have their own niche on the market; freight management takes this to a whole new level, so take advantage whenever you can.
Be proactive
Depending on the state of the industry, waiting around for great business opportunities will simply not work. You need to create opportunities yourself so your business can prosper in the long run. Research the market and look for more suppliers to add to your mix. But, don't stop there, make them come in for a supplier day to get to know them personally and see there are other suppliers involved in your organisation. This collaboration of a "Supplier Day"as we wrote about in this blog post , can go a long way towards proactive freight management. Blogging is also one excellent way of keeping track of your progress, showing activity across the board and allowing your customers to see you’re developing and growing, so don’t underestimate the power of content marketing for your business to increase proactive collaboration.
Experience
No amount of preparation will be enough compared to experience, so you will need to be properly prepared for the market if you want to keep things working fluidly as time progresses. You need to be able to cover all aspects of the business with your preparations, but your actual experience will also play a great role in the future as you understand the finer details of what you’re doing. There is no doubt that you likely have a specific product you work with, so it would be to your advantage if you use a transportation management 3PL that specialises in understanding the shipping practices related to those products as well as many others. Transportation and freight management service providers will be able to provide you with more information on the subject and who should be involved in moving your freight for you.
Communication
You need to ensure all details concerning the freight are given to the freight management services provider, as they will have a chance to give you a service to better match the needs you have, connecting you with the right carrier to handle any of the specific shipping conditions you may have. This process is done on the front end through a current transportation and freight management consultation and analysis. Then, armed with that data, the transportation management services provider can give you a solution that best matches what you need in order to reach your stated goals. This upfront collaboration yields great long term and sustainable bottom line savings.
Packing phase
This is one essential part of the process, as you will need to ensure you have secured the freight for transport to guard against freight damage and thus avoiding a freight claim. This is even more so if your freight has any special needs. With more and more shippers looking at LTL solutions in terms of shipping in order to cut down their costs, you would do well to know how this process works and how proper packing can allow you to avoid costly and time consuming freight claims.
Quality assurance
Whenever you work with a professional transportation management 3PL, they will look after your interests, as you as a client are the lifeblood of their company. A good services provider will align themselves with other transportation companies to provide the best service they can in the long run, but you need to be able to ask them a few questions to check and understand their quality control procedures. You need to know whether they have a Quality Assurance Program, the condition of their business practice and its maintenance, whether they have control checks in case of anomalous events and contingencies to ensure your freight arrives on time and safe and more. A disaster recovery plan should also be a part of the way they operate to ensure all bases are covered when you work with them.
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