Finding Quality Warehouse Space When Space is Limited

Finding quality warehouse space can be difficult.  Oftentimes companies spend too much time and resources searching for warehousing providers that meet their ever-changing needs. To complicate matters, most logistics managers do not have the expertise or an established network of outside warehouses to do so efficiently.

With constantly changing storage requirements, companies need an efficient way to manage their outside warehouse networks including food safety requirements, insurance coverage, rate negotiations, and transportation. One solution to finding quality storage space when space is limited it to utilize a managed warehouse service provider. Utilizing a managed warehouse service provider can deliver value through:

Simplified operations—Companies who provide managed warehouse services will essentially manage all of your outside warehouse relationships. This will leave you with just one invoice to pay for your entire network of suppliers.

Established Networks— A managed warehouse service provider will have a vast database of warehouses in various locations.  They have already built relationships with these providers and have verified them for quality.

Team of Experts—Companies who provide managed warehouse services will have a trained team of experts in operations, engineering, warehouse legal liability, rate negotiations and food safety requirements. This is something most companies simply do not have in-house.

Reduced Risk—When you work with a managed warehouse service provider, you’ll have access to warehouse legal expertise that can protect your products from being lost, stolen or damaged, which requires an understanding of loss limits and insurance coverage.

Standard operating procedures (SOP)—A managed warehouse service provider will have SOPs to address food safety and FSMA requirements for outside warehouses. Their network of storage providers will be trained on these SOPs to ensure the integrity of your products.

When warehousing is outside of a company’s core business, it makes it difficult to find the time, resources, and expertise to efficiently manage everything that goes into locating and managing outside storage networks. Enlisting the help of a managed warehouse service provider can allow companies to focus on their business, while saving time and reducing risk.

How Can Shippers Prepare For The ELD Mandate?

The Electronic Logging Device (ELD) mandate will take effect on December 18, 2017, and will require all truck drivers (unless exempt) to connect an ELD device to their truck engine to track their hours of service. To increase driver safety, drivers will not be able to drive over their allotted hours - 14 working hours, 11 driving hours a day, with 10 hours off in between shifts. This mandate will have a major impact on both drivers and shippers, which means driver efficiency will become a shared responsibility among all parties in the supply chain. 

From the shipper’s perspective, the ELD mandate could lead to reduced carrier productivity, driver shortages, and increased rates. Drivers may also refuse to work with facilities with extended wait times or charge more for going into difficult loading and unloading locations.

Longer wait times may turn into service failures for the shipper because product will not be delivered on time. This, coupled with capacity shortages, may force shippers to resort to expedited solutions or team drivers, which can cost 10-30% more than traditional solo transits. The ELD mandate will also result in drivers holding shippers to their appointment times or charging them if they are forced to wait. 

So how can shippers be more prepared to handle these challenges?

• Review appointment and lead times. Check with your carriers to make sure they will be on-time, and communicate with them when wait times are expected to be longer than normal. Additionally, provide carriers with enough lead time so that they can legally run the load.

• Preload trailers. Preloading trailers, and using drop and hook when possible, can save drivers nearly an hour compared to live loads.

• Be carrier friendly. Shippers should consider offering flexible appointment times and extending their hours of operation. In addition, providing safe overnight parking, or suggesting nearby parking can save drivers from eating into their hours of service while searching for a spot to park for their 10 hours off. 

• Improve staffing. Shippers should consider hiring additional staff during peak seasons. 

The ELD mandate will have a major impact on shippers, drivers, and many others within the supply chain. Actively seeking out ways to efficiently load and unload trailers and decreasing driver wait time will go a long way in lessening the inevitable challenges that will come with this mandate.

Six Steps to Coordinating Effective Customer Events

With today’s technology, face-to-face connections are oftentimes very rare. Events allow an organization to focus on connecting with customers on a more personal level.  Having these interpersonal relationships with your customers can have a huge impact on their loyalty to your organization.  Below are six steps to follow to execute a successful customer event.

• Target Audience. Determine who you are trying to target.  Do you want to build relationships with prospective customers, strengthen relationships with existing customers, or show appreciation to vendors that are vital to your businesses success? Define your audience and create your invite list.

• Budget.  Determine how much you can spend on your event.  It’s best to work line item by line item and take every expense into consideration.  Setting a budget and estimating your expenses will keep you on track and deliver the best ROI.

• Timeline.  Develop a timeline of what needs to get done in order to keep your team on track. Create standard operating procedures (SOP) so that you can make sure all the details are thought through and planned accordingly.

• Marketing. In order to have a successful event, you need people to show up.  Have fun with your communication and promotions by creating a brand around your event.  Create unique and high quality invitations that promote the brand, make your company standout and give a good lasting impression on your customers.

• Execute. The day has finally arrived for your event! Follow your plan, be prepared and execute a successful event.  Most importantly, have fun!

• Debrief. After the event is over, plan a time to meet with all involved and go over what went well and what didn’t.  Now is the time to be honest with yourself to ensure you have another successful event next year.  It’s equally important to also survey those who attended the event as it is to debrief with those involved in planning and execution.

Events are vital to building lasting relationships with your customers. A successful event can lead to client retention, customer satisfaction and even new business.  

Is Your Supply Chain FSMA Compliant?

The Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), a ruling built off of the 2005 Sanitary Food Transportation Act, went into effect on April 6, 2017. The act shifts the focus from responding to food contamination to preventing it by prohibiting the distribution of “adulterated food” or food that has been held under unsanitary conditions. FSMA affects all parties within the supply chain. This includes shippers/brokers, receivers, loaders, and carriers.

The act specifically addresses safety, not spoilage or quality issues for all human foods, animal foods, additives, and dietary supplements. It requires all parties within the supply chain to be aware of things like material failure of temperature controls, or other conditions which could cause the food to become unsafe – thus requiring all parties within the supply chain to work together and communicate more than ever before. Below are a few ways to ensure your supply chain is compliant.

Online training. Communicate the availability of the FDAs online training to your carrier base.

Communication with shippers. Shippers should provide the carriers and receivers with key information for transport such as temperature requirements, product descriptions, and special trailer cleaning requirements to ensure food product is safely transported.

Standardized communications.  Carriers should receive all of the shipper’s product specifications on their carrier tender to avoid miscommunications.

Updated contracts. Your company’s contracts with its carriers should include language on FSMA, as well as the cleanliness and condition of the trailers and seals.

Detailed records. Shipper orders, carrier tenders, and any other load specific information should be stored by all parties indefinitely for future reference.

Food safety requirements are changing, and it’s important to make sure not only your company, but also your logistics partners are compliant to ensure a safe and efficient supply chain. 

Why Your Company Needs a CRM

Your company’s lead sales person just quit on the spot. The business needs to reach out to all her accounts and contacts to maintain continuity. Are you panicking on where this wealth of phone numbers and emails might reside? Is your next step to rifle through a stack of business cards, or search through her Outlook contacts? If that’s the case, and this entire scenario gives you a bit of heartburn, it’s time to invest in a customer relationship management (CRM) system.

A CRM is many things, but at its root, is a simple premise building off the scenario above. No single person should ever “own” contact information. It should never be held on one sales person’s phone or desktop. Continuity of business – the if-you-were-hit-by-a-truck-today scenario – requires that contact information reside in a central location.

Additional benefits a CRM will bring to a business include:

Marketing Automation link – A CRM linked to your company’s marketing automation system will archive what campaigns, emails, and invites business contacts were included on. In addition, most will note when they visited your website, and what forms were completed. Basically, the CRM will give you a snapshot of marketing touches with each individual.

Running history of accounts – Many CRMs will archive emails, proposals, and calls to contacts, as well as offer a notes section. They also enable you categorize the account, for instance as a prospect, former customer, etc., as well as note what services (purchases) they bought. The benefit here is if a new sales manager takes over a particular account they can quickly get updated on previous, current, and future sales activity.

Lead management – What happens after a lead is handed off to a sales manager? Many CRMs can codify the process and be built to provide follow-up reminders for specific actions in the sales cycle. The end result is better accounting for leads once they enter your system.

Reporting – A CRM will allow you to run any number of reports from simple customer lists, prospects lists, sales opportunities, etc.

A well-maintained CRM will not only help sales and marketing work in sync, but also will ensure continuity of business. While staff is responsible for accounts and their respective contacts, by housing contact information in one spot, companies set the baseline expectation that the information is solely owned by the company.

What Should You Look For In a Transportation Management System?

Are you looking to streamline your transportation department with a transportation management system (TMS)? If so, it can often be difficult to know where to start. There are many different systems on the market – all with different functionalities, prices, and customer service. It might seem logical to choose the most popular system; however, top-tier systems are typically the most expensive and robust, which means you could be paying for features you don’t need.

It’s important to assess your requirements for a new TMS, and research systems that meet those needs to ensure you get the best value and the most use out of your system. Below are a few things to consider when you take on the task of selecting a new TMS. 

Customization – For companies like 3PL’s, which have multiple customers with different requirements to manage within their TMS, customization is essential to meet customers’ unique needs.

Cloud-based – If you want your customers to have access to their load information, it’s important to focus on cloud-based systems that offer a customer portal.  This gives them the ability to sign on to their account at any time, enter loads, check load statuses, look up invoices, POD (proof of delivery), and much more.

Automation – A highly automated system will be a huge time saver by performing functions such as sending carrier tenders, storing carrier and customer rates, automatic track and trace of loads, and invoicing.

Optimized loads –To get the best prices on loads, look for systems that provide a number of optimization options.  You want a system that easily identifies loads that can be consolidated into multi-stop shipments or backhaul options. 

Reporting – To keep track of key metrics, it’s necessary for your TMS to have robust reporting capabilities. Reports can show things like carrier costs, customer spend, specific lane volumes, and other important load information.

Customer service – As with any piece of technology, you are bound to run into questions and problems. Understanding the training and customer service that your TMS provides is key. You don’t want to lock into a system that provides little onboarding support and bills for every question you have.

Price – Once you have narrowed down your requirements, get quotes from all of the systems that meet your needs. Furthermore, ask each TMS supplier to provide you with a list of references. Ask around and see if each TMS provider was able to stay within their quoted amount and how happy the references are with their chosen system.

Be diligent in your research to ensure that your TMS has all of the functions you need now, while also considering how those needs may change in the future. Imagine spending numerous hours implementing and training on a new system, only to find out it is lacking in features you’ll need a year or two from now.

After you find the right system, be sure to thoroughly clean any data that will be imported into your new TMS, so you are set up for success from the start.   

Are your employee safety initiatives enough?

When we come to work, we expect it to be a safe environment. Although employee safety is largely up to employers to structure and enforce, it is also the responsibility of employees to take those initiatives seriously to ensure their own safety.

In manufacturing, logistics, and other industries, where employees are either operating heavy machinery, or handling hazardous materials, it’s critical to have a multi-level safety plan. The list below is just a snapshot of initiatives that should be in place to protect your staff.

Leadership training. Every successful safety plan needs to undergo continuous improvement to keep up with the needs of the company. This responsibility should be given to a head of operations or an executive team member that is dedicated to the initiative. This includes attending OSHA classes and other training to learn about best practices in safety that they can bring back to their team.

Employee training. All new hires should be trained on a company’s safety topics starting on day one. This includes completing any special certifications, such as forklift training, before they can hit the ground running. Safety training should also be kept top-of-mind by holding monthly refresher courses with employees on a variety of subjects.

Get employees involved. Leadership should ask for employee volunteers interested in additional OSHA safety training. These “safety advisors” will act as an extra set of eyes checking for hazards in the work environment. Employees not designated “safety advisors” should still be given regular, structured opportunities to voice any concerns they might have regarding safety in the workplace. You might be surprised what they uncover.

Utilize audits. An audit schedule should be put into place to keep employees focused on continuous improvement. Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) audits not only highlight food safety, but also personnel safety. Behavior Based Safety (BBS) audits ensure that employees are behaving as they were trained, to remain injury-free.

Injury diagnosis. When an injury does occur, utilizing a PC365 nurse (24/7/365 nurse hotline) allows for injuries to be diagnosed on-the-spot. This ensures an employee will get the proper care following a serious injury.

Although it is now against OSHA guidelines to incentivize employees to prevent injuries, it’s important for companies to set high, yet attainable safety goals so that everyone has a number to work toward. After all, safety is a team effort, and requires both leadership and employee cooperation in order to make work a safer place to be.