3PL companies: Optimize your distribution network and improve the delivery experience for end consumers

26th January 2021

Using only a small number of carriers when shipping parcels for many different customers is not optimal. In order for you to meet your customers’ demands and offer attractive delivery options, utilizing multiple carrier services is crucial.

As a 3PL company, you ship high volumes of parcels for different clients across multiple industries to recipients spread throughout the world. This makes it complex to meet both your markets’ and consumers’ demands.

Sticking to only one or two carriers can cause problems. For example, it:

• Leaves you overly reliant on one carrier if their network goes down. With the no alternative in place, this leads to delayed orders, increased costs and ultimately, upset customers.
• Limits the number of convenient delivery services you can offer. End consumers like choice and will ultimately go elsewhere if they are forced to pay a high or price for delivery.
• Can increase shipping costs. If you ship parcels of different sizes or weights, but use the same carrier for every time, you’re probably spending more than you need to. See our case study from leading UK retailer Harvey Nichols as a good example of the large savings that can be made from utilizing a multi carrier strategy.

With the world’s largest carrier library, Consignor for Logistics gives you instant access to hundreds of global, national, regional, local, and same-day delivery companies, allowing you to support your customers with new and relevant services.

“We can quickly and easily select the carrier we need or add new carriers in line with our expansion with the world’s largest carrier library available in the Consignor platform,” says Fredrik Krysén, Transport Director at Aditro Logistics.

Stay updated on the latest carrier requirements

Carriers update their shipping data requirements on a regular basis. This means you need to update your system regularly so the data you send to your carriers is in the right structure so your shipments can be picked up and sent to recipients without delay.

When using multiple carriers, staying updated on the latest carrier requirements is time consuming and when updating manually, the risk of errors increases. With Consignor for Logistics all this is done automatically, so you can focus on more important tasks.

“Before we started using Consignor we coded our own labels for the different carrier products in our WMS system, which was time consuming due to continuous updates from the carriers. Today Consignor does all this. It is especially in that field that we have gained time, so we instead are able to focus on what we do best,” says Peter Slatcher, Logistics Manager at Prime Cargo.

Your customers may also have their own requirements for the shipping label. Using a simple overlay printed on top of the original label, you can easily add additional information such as bar codes and additional text, while complying with your carriers’ requirements.

Hassle free dangerous goods process

If you are shipping dangerous goods, your carriers require detailed information in order to know how to handle them. This extensive documentation and the manual transfer of data required makes it confusing and time consuming to ship dangerous goods.

Consignor for Logistics makes it easier for you to ship dangerous goods, by automatically printing the necessary documents and transferring all the relevant data to your carrier. Not only does this save manual working hours, it also eliminates potential fines and avoidable accidents due to incorrect documentation.

“Earlier we wrote freight labels for our dangerous goods shipments by hand, but with Consignor we automatically print these labels, saving us 2-3 minutes in processing time per order. When you have 50 dangerous goods shipments a day, this is a big saving,” says Peter Hermansson, IT Manager at Andreas Stihl.

Create your own delivery fleet

If you want to expand your delivery options to include your own fleet of vehicles, this usually means investing in expensive PDA devices that are difficult to use and integrate to your existing systems.

With Consignor’s Scan App for smartphones, you get PDA functionality right in your pocket. Through our mobile app, you can easily create your own delivery fleet to gain more control and visibility across your whole network.

By downloading Scan App on their Android or Apple device, your drivers can scan parcels to update their status and through an online, cloud-based portal, you can see where drivers are and if they are active or off duty.

Optimize your delivery fleet

It’s difficult for your drivers to manually work out the best route when delivering parcels to multiple locations.

Scan App solves this problem, by automatically calculating the fastest delivery route, providing expected drop off times, showing the distance between each drop and displaying the route on Google Maps.

And that’s not all. Via Scan App, drivers can upload information such as the delivery status, signatures and photo capture which can be viewed by your customers and the end recipient via a cloud based portal. Recipients can also automatically be notified about key events so they are kept up-to-date at every stage of their parcel’s journey.

“Scan App is flexible and independent of hardware, which is highly significant for us, as we use many external drivers to deliver parcels and goods. With Scan App we can provide track & trace on all parcels. Track & trace is absolutely vital in the distribution industry!” says Thomas Wallin, CEO at BFT Logistik.

This article is the third in a series of articles around how to Gain Control of Your Logistics Supply Chain. You can read the first article “Integrate your key systems to gain control of your logistics supply chain” here and the second article “Cut your delivery times and reduce costs by automating and consolidating your shipments” here.

Download our free e-book to learn more about how Consignor for Logistics can optimize your shipping.