What are the Pros of Directly Reaching out to 3PL (Third-Party Logistics Companies)
Now that you’re running with the big dogs, you’ve got to keep up with the competition. The best way to do that is by making sure you’re using every advantage you can get. One courier partner may offer insurance for shipments while another offers a quicker remittance cycle.
Of the many services offered by 100+ shipping companies in India, you can choose which you need based on a wide range of parameters. And you can stay in close contact with your courier partners every step of the way. So you can have a bigger say in how your supply chain operates.
1. Access to Niche Services
Courier partners are not just here to deliver orders at cheap rates. They also need to make the experience as smooth as possible for customers. This could require different considerations.
Specialized services often come from niche courier partners. While aggregators for courier or logistics services tend to tie up with the most popular, it’s the underdogs that typically step in to steal the show, offering services like:-
- COD services
- Customized Packaging/Labels
- Customized Pickup/Manifestation Process
- Wider Reach
- Security and Insurance
- Selection of Vehicle
- Express Delivery
- Hyperlocal Delivery
- Same Day/Next Day Delivery
- Temperature-controlled transit
2. Greater Scope for Improvement
The essence of providing the most satisfying delivery experience to customers is to remember that there’s always room for improvement. Once an order is marked as “out-for-delivery”, there are numerous types of delivery exceptions that can occur.
You can combat increasing delivery failures and keep RTO numbers low, through careful monitoring of carriers and by pushing strategic initiatives.
3. Easier Performance Monitoring
Closer contact with carriers gives you a clearer understanding of their delivery mechanism. Because you maintain a close distance to them, you get a bird’s eye view of their operations. You can therefore monitor performance using more parameters.
4. Ability to Perform Root-Cause Analysis
Maintaining greater control over your supply chain allows you to look at the delivery performance of any courier partner side by side the goals you need to reach. Determining exactly why an error occurs repeatedly can help to ensure steps are taken to stop it from happening again.
5.Direct Intimation to Carriers
These steps can’t be taken alone, however. It requires the active effort of both carriers and e-commerce companies to fix flaws in the system. Being able to reach out directly to courier companies to inform them of repeated issues saves time and effort. It also means you can address these problems quickly and take the help of experts and specialists in supply chain management.
6. More Room to Negotiate
In the inaugural words of John. F. Kennedy, “Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.” We’ve established that business is all about the customer, and in the case of carriers, the customer is you.
So the first thing to remember when tying up with courier partners separately is not to fear negotiating! Remember that as a growing company, now with a measurably large volume of orders, you have the power to dictate some, if not most terms.
7. Direct Contact
This is your first source of power. If you want to know the real details, they say it’s best to go straight to the source. Directly reaching out to a courier partner lets you decide the exact terms of your arrangement. This gives you much more room to consider adding a variety of value-added services that would not have been available via a shipping or logistics aggregator in India.
8. No Added Margin to Aggregators
Aggregators for eCommerce typically add a margin to the shipping rates provided to you. Directly tying with courier partners or companies removes this margin and lets you create independent contracts. The more you have to trade with, the more willing others are to trade with you.
Approaching a carrier with the opportunity for them to fulfill a large volume gives you a huge advantage. You can leverage the potential rise in your volumes to get low rates for greater coverage and services.