Let’s talk for a minute about the “7 r’s of logistics”: getting the right product, to the right customer, in the right quantity, in the right condition, to the right place, at right time, for the right cost. That’s the heart of the outbound logistics process in a nutshell—but anyone who’s been involved in any part of the supply chain can tell you that ticking all 7 boxes consistently is no mean feat.
Why? Because outbound logistics is a notoriously complicated process, with more moving parts than you can shake a packing slip at. Once an order is placed, you need total visibility into the details and quantities, as well as your available stock, and you need to move the items from point a to point b (and c, and d…) without incurring any damage. And you need to know where in the world any given SKU is at any given time.
But when it all comes together, you get happy customers and manageable supply chain costs. So what are the keys to making that happen? In other words, how can you master outbound logistics and ensure cost-efficient deliveries and smooth operations across the board.
Let’s take a quick step back here and define our terms:
What does outbound delivery mean?
At a high level, it covers everything from the moment the goods for a given order or set of orders are ready to leave your four walls. This includes:
Depending on exactly how your supply chain is constructed, this probably encompasses much of the middle mile and all of the last mile. So it should come as no surprise that it involves a lot of complexity and is difficult for most businesses to get right—at least without the right tools and the right processes.
Getting it right, however, is crucial to keeping your customers happy. From the moment they place an order to the moment it shows up at their home, business, or job site (in the right condition and quantity), customers want up-to-date information and clarity into what they should expect from your delivery team. When you put yourself in a position to provide that, you can strengthen your brand and cut down on the kinds of disruptions that cost you money and time in logistics management.
Outbound logistics encompasses a huge part of the supply chain—but there’s a lot that has to go right before your outbound delivery processes spring into action. Everything leading up to that point is part of the inbound logistics process, i.e. the part of the supply chain that leads from your suppliers to your own four walls.
Here, you’re essentially the customer—and what you want here as a customer should tell you a lot about how best to manage outbound logistics from a customer experience standpoint. In all likelihood, you want clear, frequent updates when orders from your suppliers are on their way to your warehouse. You want to be notified immediately if there are any delays, you want to track the shipment’s progress, and you want clear proof of exchange for your records.
If anything goes wrong, you want to be able to reach out to someone directly to resolve the situation.
Building in that level of connectivity between inbound and outbound logistics is a crucial keystone for ensuring efficiency in both processes.
Putting this all together can be difficult and time-consuming under the best of conditions. But, especially as technology evolves, there is a way forward. The trick is to find a way to overcome the top challenges that come with outbound shipping and delivery management.
Getting the handover right between each phase of the outbound logistics process can be challenging. Each area will have different teams with different software solutions, so making sure everyone is looking at the right data at the right time isn’t a given.
Here visibility is the absolute key. This comes from a few different places, but as a starting point it’s important to make sure that each software solution used by each team can integrate seamlessly to share data in near-real-time. If you have something that can act as a single source of truth across the first mile, middle mile, and last mile, you can set yourself up for success.
Ultimately, every aspect of the outbound delivery process should be leading up to your fleet (or a third party fleet) getting loaded down with items and sent out into the world. When that happens, you don’t want to find yourself scrambling to fulfill orders that didn’t fit onto the trucks.
This might sound like a straightforward thing to get right, but one of the complaints we hear most frequently from businesses that haven’t optimized their outbound logistics effectively is that they feel like they should be able to do much more with the trucks they already have.
Most of the time, they're right. Getting the most out of your delivery capacity requires visibility into what that capacity actually amounts to and the ability to optimize it for a number of different factors. Both of these are easier said than done—most of the time, the information you need isn’t at your fingertips unless you’ve put in the effort to make sure it’s available.
The good news here is that modern route optimization technology can go a long way towards helping you visualize—and maximize—your capacity. Just codify your delivery parameters around service times, driver skills and availability, customer requirements, etc., then let an advanced routing algorithm turn those parameters into efficient routes in a matter of minutes.
Success or failure in outbound delivery all comes down to the customer. If everything comes together and you’re able to check off those 7 r’s, then you’re in a position to win repeat business (and in all likelihood you haven’t had to spend the day putting out fires). If not, things can start to get dicey.
Visibility has been a bit of a running theme throughout this piece, and that’s not about to change now. Ensuring a great customer experience is all about providing visibility and connectivity throughout the process. This means notifications and alerts when orders are ready to schedule, scheduled, and on their way. It also means live delivery tracking and the ability to reach out to a customer support rep directly (or to an AI-powered chat agent) with any questions or concerns.
The big challenge here is scale. If you’re sending out messages or even making phone calls manually, you’re going to struggle to keep out. Conversely, if you can automate the customer communication and engagement portion of your outbound logistics process, you can keep customers in the loop and satisfied significantly more easily.
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It’s no secret that last mile logistics can account for more than half of total logistics costs—which is why it’s the most crucial part of the outbound delivery process to optimize. And optimizing your outbound delivery and logistics process to overcome delivery hurdles means leveraging the right software solution.
How can you tell something is the right software solution?
Here are a few signs to look for:
Change management is never easy, but the right last mile delivery solution can help you future-proof your outbound delivery process and reduce total delivery costs across the board. It’s not just a technology investment, it’s an investment in the future of your business.
Talk to one of our advisors today to learn more about choosing the right solution.