Collaborative Onsite Outsourcing

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In response to the article in LinkedIn: 5 Smart Reasons Employers Should Stop Hiring for Full-time Jobs written by J.T. O’Donnell,  I wrote that companies must utilise all forms of employment including full-time, part-time, outsourced and contracted. Only this will allow companies to get the best ROI from the available and seemingly diminishing pool of Supply Chain talent (I have included my original response below).

Today I find a paper published  by C.H. Robinson stating a similar fact. Their paper “Collaborative Outsourcing: How to gain value from a strategic onsite logistics resource” is focused on Logistics and how outsourced suppliers may need to place some of their own resources on site with their customer.

Not only is this good reading but is a good guide to what and how companies can optimise their requirements.

My original response to JT’s article: There many facets to the concept of “employment”, the problem as I read it, the author seems to be extreme one way and many of the comments extreme the other way. In reality there should be more project driven roles (contract) but this does not detract from the fact that there also needs to be a large part of the organisation that remains permanent. Companies should be utilising the best people for the particular task/function in the most appropriate manner. Some tasks/projects are always better to be managed by either outsourcing or having a person contracted for that project, remembering this can be a short term or long term/extended contract, other roles should nearly always be done on a permanent basis in-house (full-time or part-time). Aside from the perceptions of individuals many companies do not analyse their requirements correctly, too many focus on an immediate requirement or need and hire to an outdated expectation for example: “THIS should be a permanent role and we will have to hire a temp for THAT one”. Also: Project driven roles should not be considered “Temps” – there is too much negative stigma attached to this title, call them Project Contractors, for that is what they are. There are far too many people not being allowed to be the best they can, or to give the best they can to the company they work for, in any capacity, due to so much inaccurate and inconsistent thinking about what a “job” is.

Improving Your Freight Costs 3 – What do you need?

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Requirements and Standards – these can be different for every shipper (you) and most of the time it will depend on what your customer wants. For example same-day, next day, normal transit, etc.

Even before getting any quotes find out what is important to you – and your customers. Make sure you understand what it is your customers really want, for this I have a great example. A client was told by many of their customers in WA, they needed to speed up their deliveries as they were always too slow. After reviewing the delivery history and talking further to customers, the issue was not the speed but the reliability as deliveries could take anywhere between 5 to 20 days for the same customer; a different problem and easier to fix.

Other requirements include:

  • Reporting – what info do you need, how often and is it ‘self-service’ or automatically sent.
  • Invoicing – what are the terms. 7 days is standard terms but ask for better.
  • Loss/Damage – what is your compensation? Here volume counts, if you have a $5M account you will be able to negotiate a better deal than zip, nothing (their reason: “We are not common carriers”). You should at least have the cost of the consignment refunded.
  • Claims – When (if) you do claim, how long will they take to research and settle. 45 days after notification is more than adequate. If it takes longer, it will get lost-in-time and the claim will quietly disappear and die.
  • Scanning – Freight providers will not generally take accountability for any consignment until it is scanned into their system. Often, this is not until it is scanned at their receiving depot. Try and get scanning at your site – as it is collected.
  • PODs – in the age of the cloud, these should be available within 2hrs of delivery and no more than 36hours for remote areas. They should also be FREE unless archived (typically after 3-6mths).
  • Action on Error – What will your freight provider do when a delivery has been lost/misplaced or will not meet its due delivery time? They should be advising you of the fact and a new ETA and before your customer rings you complaining of a no show.

Once you have what you want/expect from your freight provider, you can then maintain a focus on your requirements while assessing their quote and not be distracted by their marketing information. Next phase – getting the quotes.