Increasing Efficiency with Third-Party Transportation

Third-party transportation services are essential for ensuring inbound deliveries when a buyer does not manage their own fleet. Buyers often rely on third-party logistics providers (3PLs) to manage the complexities of inbound logistics, allowing the buying organization to focus on core business operations. However, working with 3PLs comes with challenges, including coordination issues and the need for precise planning and execution.

Technological advancements have significantly transformed inbound logistics. Efficient and accurate planning and execution are vital, especially when multiple parties are involved. Modern technology solutions can overcome these challenges by enhancing coordination between stakeholders.

Enhancing Collaboration through Technology

Successful organizations who manage their own inbound logistics prioritize collaboration, efficiency, and accuracy when coordinating transportation with suppliers and 3PLs. Buyers responsible for delivering products to their location often contract a 3PL to plan and execute the pickup and delivery from the supplier. In which case, the buyer, ultimately accountable for their own inbound delivery, must ensure a level of coordination such that the right items are picked up from the right place and delivered to the right destination, efficiently and error-free.

For optimal cross-company coordination, best-in-class buyers have found that leading cloud-based business network solutions enable buyers, suppliers, and 3PLs to share information seamlessly. Unlike traditional point-to-point data exchange methods like EDI, a business network approach to collaboration modernizes how systems and processes connect across companies.

A business network serves to facilitate more robust supply chain collaboration through standard shared processes that extend across company boundaries.

When applied to inbound logistics, leading business network solutions enable the buyer, supplier, and 3PL to coordinate and link processes for accurate information sharing, resulting in improved delivery execution. This type of direct, cross-company collaboration results in more efficient operations and reduced risk of errors, not only for the buyer accountable for the inbound delivery, but for all of these partners in the supply chain.

Improving Inbound Logistics

At the root of the most significant risks faced by buyers when working with 3PLs to execute on their inbound deliveries from suppliers is miscommunication that challenges the necessary coordination among the parties involved.

3PLs require clear and timely information in order to plan and optimize their transport, to pick up the right product on time from the supplier location, and deliver it to the accurate buyer location. The right technology can provide an integrated solution, as advanced information sharing systems help reduce human error, allowing data to drive the process.

What leading buying organizations have found is that a standardized data exchange through a business network keeps all parties on track, ensuring buyers can work efficiently on a common process with any supplier or 3PL joining the network.

Once on the shared platform of a business network, the opportunity for seamless data exchange between suppliers, buyers, and 3PL providers takes shape as a cross-company, common process that coordinates timely information among this three-party supply chain.

By combining the processes of each party involved, buyers can drive the enhanced coordination of all parties involved to reduce delays, mitigate risks, and ensure the smooth flow of information and therefore the related goods.

A business network integration ultimately supports consistent processes, such that, even as suppliers and 3PLs change, buyers can gain resilience to disruptions to maintain the continuity of supply.

Keys to Inbound Logistics Collaboration Technology

The benefits of business network-based technology for inbound logistics are evident, but what actions can a buyer take to move to this next level of cross-company coordination?

1. Conduct a Technology Needs and Risks Assessment: This involves identifying specific supply chain challenges and evaluating the current supporting process and technology infrastructure. Understanding base needs and risks helps select the right technology solutions that address the organization’s unique requirements.
2. Choose the Right Technology Solutions: When selecting technology solutions to meet needs and mitigate risks, leading manufacturers value not only functional capabilities, but also capabilities pertaining to data integration with internal systems and with external partners. Scalability and interoperability, and the strengths that cloud solutions bring in these areas, are crucial to ensure that the chosen solutions can grow with the business and integrate seamlessly with internal and external systems.
3. Manage Change Internally and Externally: Training staff to use new technologies is vital for successful implementation, but leading companies also plan for and manage change both internally and externally. Managing a process transition and addressing resistance to change, both internally and with trading partners, are critical to a successful supply chain. Supply chains succeed or struggle according to their weakest link, so any process improvement must coincide with buy-in and collaboration from supply chain trading partners in order to truly build resilience to disruption. In the case of inbound logistics, a buyer’s ability to maintain consistent processes despite changes in suppliers and 3PLs is a key to the resilience of their supply chain.

Technology is essential for optimizing inbound logistics and improving efficiency, coordination, and collaboration. These advancements in support of best-in-class inbound logistics operations ultimately ensure the continuity of supply by avoiding stockouts, keeping production on schedule, and meeting customer promise dates.

Looking ahead, emerging technologies hold the potential to enhance inbound logistics further. Organizations are encouraged to stay ahead of the curve by continuously exploring new ways to adopt cross-company collaboration as part of improving their own processes.

Joining a business network can significantly strengthen supply chains by extending business processes across trading partners and closing gaps between buyers, suppliers, and 3PLs. Traditional means of email-based 3PL inbound coordination are no longer sufficient to bolster a buyer against the far reaching effects of global supply chains; leading buyers and manufacturers are finding that modern technology supporting intercompany collaboration offers a scalable, flexible, and intelligent solution for the future.