8 Essential Ways to Improve Delivery Management and Logistics for Small Business 

Emenac Packaging USA
2023-07-24
8 Essential Ways to Improve Delivery Management and Logistics for Small Business 

For long-term success, it’s important to manage the delivery and logistic processes of small businesses. Building an effective system for the timely delivery of all products will help in creating a strong identity for your brand. Logistics divide into three major parts, first to accept the product from the customer for delivery (procurement), second store it in a warehouse, and third to deliver it. If any of the phases in logistics remain unaddressed, it affects the complete supply chain.

Let’s learn more about how you can improve your delivery management and logistics for small businesses in order to get a sustainable competitive advantage over your competitors. 

1. Understand the Current Delivery Process 

It will be way easier to improve your current delivery process by analyzing and evaluating it first. You can start with the sourcing of raw materials, storing your inventory, shipping your product, and end with ensuring customer service. Point out all the people and locations involved in the processes that will provide you with a bigger picture of the utilization of current resources and operations. 

2. Adopt an Interconnected Plan

After accessing your present supply chain, it’s time to add new things to the plan to optimize your delivery management plan. Don’t forget to include all the potential challenges to each part of the process. For instance, in the case of procurement, you need the right equipment, and the lack of it becomes a challenge to deal with all the problems of procurement. The same is true for transportation, manufacturing, packaging & labeling, etc. 

3. Train Your Staff on Logistic Procedures 

When you create a new plan for your logistics and delivery system, you need to train your staff in a way they could not only be aware of the latest logistic software but also use them efficiently. The training program can be conducted in the form of interaction between managers to front-line staff. For tracking the success of the training, arrange some practical challenges to overcome after the training. 

4. Implement an Inventory Management System 

The inventory management system includes developing a plan for both the storage of the current inventory and incoming. It will help you to avoid the situation of overstocking or understocking. It’s better to use specialized software rather than a simple spreadsheet to easily access your storage capabilities. 

5. Keep Track of the Cost 

A major cost for delivery and logistics includes warehouse rent, utilities, security, labor, transportation, and equipment. You can calculate your expenses by creating a separate category for different sorts of expenses. 

6. Streamline Packaging and Labeling 

When you are selecting packaging for your products, make sure to use one that is more attractive to your customers. On the other hand, it must be durable enough to survive during the transit processes. You can use corrugated boxes that have all the significant features of the best packaging such as strong, lightweight, etc. 

Additionally, label your packaging properly, it will support the handler to determine the nature of the product inside the custom packaging boxes. It will minimize the probability of damage to the products.  

7. Gather Feedback 

Use online platforms and conduct some surveys to determine the needs of customers. It will help you to identify the deficiencies in different areas of the supply chain. On the flip side, you can also take feedback from your team or arrange a digital suggestion box for collecting staff responses. 

8. Monitoring the Overall Performance 

You set criteria by using key performance indicators for your delivery and logistics business. It will act as the filter to monitor the overall performance such as setting the standard number of orders per month. If the order rate is low, it means that you need to address the issues to improve it. 

Conclusion  

Logistics and Delivery businesses need to improve for getting higher efficiency and increasing their order rates. It can be started with the analysis of the existing system that leads to developing a new plan for supply chain management. After implementing the plan, you collect info from different resources such as conducting a survey for your customers and giving your staff an opportunity to open up for suggestions. Meanwhile, you establish key performance indicators to monitor the performance as a business owner to identify the areas of improvement.

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Author : Emenac Packaging USA

Having an ability to customize packaging boxes in different sizes, shapes and styles, Emenac Packaging fulfills the requirement of customers in lowest rate with flawless printed results. Not only we accept short and long run orders, we also use high quality Cardboard, Kraft and Corrugated materials to give you unrivaled printing and packaging solutions.

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