Industry Insights From Renewal Logistics:
Reasons Why Brands Work With 3PLs
As your business expands, there comes a time when you must determine whether to outsource your shipping and fulfillment operations to meet customer and market demands. To meet customer demand, many businesses turn to a third-party logistics (3PL) provider to help execute their growth.
While there are certain benefits to managing the fulfillment process on your own, scaling fulfillment operations can be challenging for retail businesses. Initially, it’s cheap and relatively easy to set up. But as your business and inventory grows, your supply chain operations can quickly become the most time-consuming and involved process to manage. That’s why partnering with a fulfillment company can be a game-changer.
One study showed that 89% of brands improved their operational effectiveness after signing on with a 3PL partner. In the same survey, 73% said these services introduced innovations into their current logistics processes.
It’s important to note that not all 3PLs offer the same services and capabilities. In this article, we will share everything you need to know about using third-party logistics providers and the critical business functions they support.
One of the reasons why 3PL is a perfect fit for e-commerce brands is because retail is diverse, dynamic, and sometimes unpredictable. Retailers may find their audience, inventory or geographic markets changing rapidly. 3PLs are partners who can help scale and grow retail businesses wherever they are at.
Why Do Brands Work With 3PLs?
Working with a 3PL allows merchants of any size to scale more quickly by delegating the challenges of managing omnichannel fulfillment, inventory management, and post-purchase customer cycles.
It also lessens your workload and gives your business an opportunity to operate in a productive and cost-efficient manner.
By working with a 3PL, you can spend more time focusing on marketing and selling your product. We’ll handle the rest. Through custom API integrations, our software will sync directly with your online shopping portal to seamlessly import orders. From there we’ll pick, pack, and ship each order as soon as it’s received.
The best part is that our process is customizable and completely scalable, so no matter how fast you grow, you’re guaranteed to get the same great service for every single order.
What is a 3PL?
3PLs or Third-Party Logistics is an outsourced company that manages a part or all of your logistics and transportation operations.
Services a 3PL may provide include:
Benefits Of Working With A 3PL
While there are many benefits to partnering with a 3PL, here are some significant benefits that resonate with many of our customers.
Time Savings
3PLs can save companies the time they typically spend managing their supply chain. Usually, 3PLs take over transportation operations and some managing functions, so the amount of manual work is significantly eliminated. 3PLs also use their technology to automate many order and administrative processes, saving you alot of time.
Cost Savings
3PLs can offer more buying and negotiation power through their extensive carrier networks. What this means it that 3PLs can broker lower transportation rates, and reduced rates for returns, claims, shipping errors, and lost sales.
Through industry connections, 3PLs can cut substantial costs you are spending on freight transportation and logistics. They typically have strong relationships with carriers and experienced freight brokers to get their retail partners lower rates and eliminate unnecessary fulfillment costs.
Continuous Optimization
3PLs have the ability to make modifications to each connection in the supply chain when needed. This means that your brand will benefit from the constant improvements 3PLs make to their logistics process.
One of the main goals of using a 3PL is the optimization value they bring. These companies analyze your supply chain and operation and can define gaps and inconsistencies, helping you to optimize processes. A 3PL partner goes through every step of your supply chain to determine the unnecessary operation and find potential for cost savings.
Industry Insights
3PLs have thorough industry knowledge and insights, and they can accurately forecast and plan the best strategies for their customers. They have the technology to produce advanced reporting and inventory management as well as tracking the entire logistics process.
The Ability To Scale And Pivot
3PLs offer businesses the flexibility and scalability to utilize supply chain resources based on current business needs. Resources can be adjusted to prevent redundancy and waste when sales are down and businesses can quickly scale up when demand increases. 3PLs are also positioned to help businesses quickly access new markets as they work with a network of diverse clients and partners.
Supply chain growth can be cumbersome for small businesses and 3PLs are a great way to grow your business because they already have the networks and relationships in place to support your brand’s growth and expansion.
Excellent Customer Service
Customer service is very important. A successful company cares about their customers through the entire customer life cycle. 3PLs are equipped with staff that can handle your customer service needs as you would. Having a reliable 3PL partner who can act as an extension of your business can help build customer satisfaction and brand reputation.
Final Thoughts
When companies choose to work with a 3PL provider, they fully reap these benefits as the 3PL truly becomes an extension of their team.
Combining all advantages above makes it easy to see why outsourcing logistics to a 3PL provider will increase overall client satisfaction. Response times within your company will be both better and more reliable leading to more satisfied clients – the ultimate goal of all businesses.
The right 3PL not only handles every step of the order process, but it’ll also help you successfully enter new markets.
Fulfilling orders isn’t easy, and doing it while scaling can make or break your brand. With the help of a fulfillment partner, your business can focus on growing, while having a perfected fulfillment process.
Contact us today for a free quote and to learn more about our company and see how a 3PL partner can help you grow your business.
24M+ Orders Processed
99.99983% Accuracy Rate
We are an Atlanta, Georgia based e-commerce fulfillment, warehousing and third party logistics company with a specialty in apparel and consumer goods, strategically partnering with brands that seek to maintain their brand identities and require flexible and scalable, on-demand solutions. With more than 17 years in operations, Renewal Logistics has become the chosen provider to companies small, medium and large because we deliver on our promise to ship both your complex and routine orders on time and correct– every time.
