Four Advantages of Planning out a Supply Chain

Planning a supply chain may seem like a difficult task. Yet it’s much better than ordering “as you need,” or figuring something out at the last minute. It can save you money and stress, while helping your shipping be more secure and allowing you to identify needs further out. Working with a contract logistics company can aid you in figuring out an element of doing business that can often seem complicated and intimidating. Logistics management offers several advantages:

1. It’s less expensive. When you’re shipping supplies that need to be there next week in order to keep a business going, any hiccup means you have to pay more. A delay like a weather event or simple human error can send your business panicking. You expedite shipping some supplies. You might even take a loss in order to just keep your doors open so that you don’t lose customers.
2. You can anticipate. When you plan out regular shipments weeks or even months ahead, you have much better control over shipping supplies. Sure, you still need to make some adjustments on the fly, but you’ll recognize and anticipate many of these even earlier than you could before. A last-minute adjustment turns into one you see days ahead of time. A next-day adjustment turns into one you can spy a week beforehand.
3. It’s safer. When you plan further ahead like this, it also saves you from making mistakes. You might find yourself in a corner and bite on a shipping rate that’s too-good-to-be-true. Well, it turns out it is, and a fly-by-night operation has left with your money and your cargo sitting on a delivery date that’s weeks too late. When you plan further ahead through logistics management, you create regular shipping relationships with proven, reliable companies.
4. It’s less stressful. Planning a supply chain like this saves you a great deal of money. It also saves you a great deal of stress. When you can compartmentalize your shipping needs like this, you have more time and energy to focus on the other elements of your business. This is a major reason that many small- and mid-sized businesses choose contract logistics. It marries low cost logistics management to businesses that need a logistics expert but can’t afford one full time.