By Mikael Trapper
Aug. 18, 2011
The main reason heads of logistics departments don’t partner with third party consultants is because they worry about how it will be perceived by their bosses. After all, their bosses hired them to do the job, didn’t they? What will hiring a third party logistics consultant say to higher-ups about their ability to run their own departments?
In my experience, as long as they have the data to back up the idea, it actually doesn’t take much for managers or supervisors to convince their bosses that hiring a third party consultant will be the right move. Executives are going to look at the bottom line. Prove that partnering with a third party will save your company money in ways it would never be able to accomplish alone by showing them how much more costly it would be to try and perform the third party’s cost-saving actions in-house. Explain in detail how the partnership will actually empower you and your department to function better in the future. In this economy, especially, anyone who’s forward-thinking when it comes to cutting costs is going to be seen as more valuable than a person who’s simply looking to get by doing the best they can with what they have. I have seen jobs made into careers by managers who were willing to step up and develop the partnerships that would propel both them and their companies forward.
To prove that partnering with a third party logistics consultant will save your company money, seek out a supply chain solutions firm that is willing to perform an initial analysis of your company’s shipping data for free. Most of the time, all that will be required of you is your permission to allow the firm to receive your company’s electronic invoice data directly from your carriers. If the firm is able to produce hard data that shows that your company is missing out on significant savings that could be achieved through things like better supply chain visibility technology, using data to come up with supply chain solutions that will give you heftier leverage during rate negotiations, or even simple auditing and reporting solutions, you can bet that the people upstairs are going to sit up and listen.
In all likelihood, your bosses are going to see purchasing supply chain technology versus developing it as a no-brainer, but if you sense some resistance, you can do a little research to find out how long most supply chain solutions firms spend developing the technology, generate some rough numbers that reflect the length of time and amount of resources it would take for your company to do the same thing, and then compare those numbers to the cost of simply purchasing the technology. You shouldn’t feel any resistance after you present those cost differentials!