/ By Karan Mudliar / Blog • Uncategorized/ • • • • • / 1 Comment

Why should you use a Freight Forwarder?

Most business today have customers spread across vast geographical area even within the country, if not internationally. Hence for success of any business, it is important that the product reaches its customers unharmed, in timely manner and at a reasonable cost. If this does not happen, the business will fail, even if it has a great product.

Now imagine that a company has to ship a large package across the Atlantic Ocean (Say from the USA to some land lock country in Europe). For it, the business has to first send it to the port via truck then choose between air or sea route to cross the Atlantic. Further, it must get the product onto the ship or aircraft, (after clearing all the customs and regulatory requirements), get the delivery at the landing port across the Atlantic, clear the customs of the landing country and then again move the package by road (or another means) to the customer. For a small business, this is very daunting. This is where freight forwarders come in.

 

What is a freight forwarding business.

 

A freight forwarder is simply a business that arranges the movement of the goods for a customer from the manufacturer to the end distribution point, or to the end customer. They are the intermediary between the business and the point of delivery (end customer or distribution point). They do not move the cargo themselves; they arrange for the shipment to be picked up, transported through various modes and by different transportation providers, customs and clearing houses till it reaches the endpoint. They specialize in coordinating between various such agencies for minimum cost and speediest movement of cargo. In a way, they orchestrate between multiple service providers. They have established relationships with transporters, ocean liners and the likes, which they use to negotiate the best possible price for their clients. They use their relationship network to identify the shipping options, find the standard shipping routes and cost associated with each and select the best possible combination of available options for the shipment. All these tasks may look as formidable or complex for a simple business who just wants to get his product across, to the customer.

 

 

Services Offered by freight Forwarders

The freight forwarders generally offer a few more associated services required for the freight, which require specialized skill which may not be available with the business.

Packaging. If the cargo is going to be loaded and unloaded at several points, it needs robust packaging that can take rough handling. If the cargo is taking sea route, then the packaging must protect the cargo from sea corrosion. When shipping through air, the low air pressure and low temperatures may be a cause of concern for some of the products, and they will need sealed packaging for same. Many such specialized packaging requirements come with the transportation and other logistical options. Since freight forwarder understands the requirements and risks associated with the chosen mode of transport, they also provide (usually), the packaging that is most suitable for that mode of transport. The shipper does not have to manage additional packaging needs. This is most helpful, when there are several types of products destined for several locations with multiple modes of transportation.

 

Labeling. Cargo passing through various checkpoints usually has strict regulatory labeling requirement. Typically a cargo label would indicate following:

  •  Type and quantity of product.
  •   Handling instructions
  •   Hazardous material information
  •   Country of origin
  •   Destination
  •   Hazard and handling instructions in local language (at source and destination)

 

The freight forwarder would generally know the labeling requirements and can fulfill them more easily and precisely.

 

Documentation. Domestic and international cargo requires lot of documentation that may be daunting for a regular business. Freight forwarders have developed their expertise in knowing exactly what kind of documentation is needed for which kind of product and destination and from where and how to procure it. Some of the typical documents required for international shipping are:

  •   Bill of Landing. The contract between the shipper and the owner of the goods.
  •   Invoice. The regular commercial invoice for the product
  •   Inspection certificate. (clearance from required agency to ensure that product meets the quality as required)
  •   Insurance.
  •   Export License.
  •   Customs documents. To ensure that product can be legally sent out from the origin country and received at the destination country and is not prohibited by either of the countries.
  •   Tax papers. To ensure all the required taxes have been paid

Freight forwarders typically don’t have any capital equipment of their own. But the service they bring in can be quite valuable even for established players. They run the supply chain show, holding all the thread of various sections of the chain. The business can leave all the transportation and its related handling, packaging, documentation and other requirements to be handled by the freight forwarder and focus on what they do the best, That is making a quality product.

/ By Karan Mudliar / Blog • Uncategorized/ • • • • / 0 Comments

Use 3PL services for a growing business

More and more businesses are using third-party logistics service providers. Building an in-house supply chain is expensive, slow and a learning process riddled with mistakes. On the other hand, outsourcing the supply chain is efficient, quick and adaptable. The benefits of using 3PL are more than just reduced initial capital outflow or getting expertise. With ever-increasing competition, businesses need to focus more and more on their core activity and reduce or divert resources from non-core activities while extracting the best out of them. Managing supply chain is one such activity that can be efficiently outsourced. In fact outsourcing such non-core activity can be strategically beneficial in the long run for a business. Here are a few advantages that a growing business can get from outsourcing its logistics.

 

Scalability – Building a supply chain requires time and investment. Underutilized supply chain represents locked capital which is bad for a growing business. On the other hand, peak utilization limits the growth that operations can achieve. However, with outsourcing, the supply chain capacity can quickly increased or reduced without much impact on scale. Quick scalability is one of the biggest advantages an outsourced supply chain can offer to a growing business. Third-party providers are geared to scale their operations depending on their client’s requirements. They invest their capital in spare capacity and clients don’t need to make any capital investment. Further, if the scale of operations reduces for a client, the extra capacity is simply sold to another customer with no impact on the first client.

 

Optimization – Logistics is frequently about optimization of the resources such as packaging, transportation, route and delivery time for most efficient use of resources with minimum time. This planning and coordination requires special skills that are expensive and hard to find. Further using the skilled and costly planners only for one business may not be the cost-efficient. 3PLs bring in planning and optimization as their core skill. They plan for most optimal warehouse locations, delivery modes and routes and club cargo from multiple clients to bring the costs down. High priority deliveries are also clubbed together to bring down their costs (as compared to individual high priority delivery). This degree of optimization is difficult to achieve for a small business without significant investment and dedication of resources, which can burn quite a hole in the pocket, as the company grows.

 

Constant innovation – Supply chain requires continuous innovation in terms of packaging, equipment, processes and even transportation vehicles. For example, newer material for pallets keeps making them stronger and lighter, new methods of merchandise scanning makes tracking more efficient, more modern robots make stacking and picking of products much faster and more comfortable. Similarly, new transport vehicles (newer trucks) keep reducing the cost of transportation. The problem is that all such innovation requires an upfront investment and business cannot make any new investment until ROI from the previous investment is realized. But with higher utilization, 3PL have faster ROI cycles and can bring in capital-intensive innovation much quicker. Besides logistics being their core business, 3PLs thrive on constant innovation in supply chain to reduce costs and improve service.

 

Quick movement between supplier – While it is a good idea to maintain long relationships, business realities sometimes require to change the vendors. This need for change could be for many reasons such as better rates, larger scale of operations, wider network spread, or simply a kind of service that is not being offered by current supplier (even today many 3PL suppliers do not offer cold storage chains). As the business grows, the supply chain requirements will also change. The scale of material handling will increase. The variety of products being sold will also increase, and this will need different logistics skills. In house logistics department will need time to change and may even put up resistance to change. Improving the skill set of the whole department is not possible in a matter of few days (or even few weeks). But changing supplier is just a matter of negotiation (apart from identification of-course). The business operations are not vastly disrupted while the change of supplier happens. As is well known, changing or upgrading a department of the business is extremely slow and tiresome process, but changing a vendor is easier.

 

Lowering of Costs – Development of supply chain needs space, warehouses, packing machines, moving and stacking machines and vehicles (as large as up to trucks and lorries) making them capital intensive investments. Also, logistic operations are equally expensive, if not more. Many times, the supply chain capacity is not fully utilized leading to a high wastage of money. The 3PL absorbs the capital investment and can depreciate the equipment much faster owing to its higher utilization. The capital cycle (for supply chain) is much more efficient for 3PL as compared to in-house supply chain investment. There is no doubt that unless the volumes are huge, 3PL makes a lot more sense regarding costs and investment for any business.

Further, as the product moves through regions, various agencies or external companies come in picture. A product moving across the border will interact with customs, excise, clearance house, export regulators. Businesses need working relationships with all of them for its cargo to move quickly and efficiently through these agencies. Developing and maintaining these relationships needs resources which cost money. As business volumes grow, the interactions with agencies also increase and need more resources. A 3PL maintains these relationships for its customers so that the businesses do not have to it themselves, and they do it more efficiently.

 

Developing supply chain is a slow and costly process and often requires changes that are expensive. As the business grows, the inefficiencies of the supply chain start to glare out. The growth phase is precisely the time when companies need an efficient supply chain. An outsourced, third party supply chain will not only eliminate the inefficiencies, but it will also bring in innovation to handle the large volumes of growing business, that may provide the edge, that a growing business needs.