Ready to Grow in 2025? How the Right 3PL Drives Customer Wins
After a collective exhale, growth is what’s next for U.S. businesses. For retailers wanting to expand, finding the right third-party logistics (3PL) partner is job one.
Unpacking the Right 3PL
Growth can mean a lot of different things: more product offerings, orders, warehouse capacity, business expansion, market reach, costs, and revenue. Omnichannel businesses require effective monitoring of multiple customer touchpoints, enabling sales and customer wins.
In simplistic terms, companies need a 3PL partner that meets customers’ demands—and their customers’ customers’ demands—consistently without delay—nirvana. However, unavoidable pre-logistics mishaps like weather-related incidents, labor shortages, and human error make reliability challenging.
Retailers can gain more operational control by understanding how impactful the right 3PL relationship is to success. Knowing what to look for is a winning start.
The Tangibles and Abstracts of Your Logistics Operations
Your business’s logistics success is dictated by tangible elements (like warehouses, inventory, and transportation) and intangible elements (like mission, vision, and goals). The right 3PL provider will bridge the gap between the two, taking care of the nuts and bolts of logistics, while supporting your company’s larger objectives.
A solid 3PL provider consolidates tangibles and abstracts, to meet short- and long-term objectives.
3PL Choice Comes Down to 5 Checkboxes
Business growth and logistics run concurrently, going from point A to point B, though the path is seldom a straight line. Companies looking to expand face a conundrum—one 3PL provider may make sense today but will they be a good fit tomorrow?
3PL Priorities Check:
✓ Scalability
✓ Cost management
✓ Data-driven
✓ Customer-centric
✓ Risk mitigation
Discovering what you need lives in the questions you ask and how a 3PL provider responds. If growth is imminent, knowing whether your logistics partner can scale and optimize throughput and efficiency while tempering costs is key.
The ideal 3PL partner may not present itself when everything goes right but when things go sideways, it shows. How quickly can they pivot, recover, and shine? Logistics and distribution networks using real-time data and analytics to track orders enable peace of mind through seamless processes and solutions from production to last-mile delivery.
Reliability is the bellwether of brand reputation, customer retention, and new business too. Does your 3PL provider’s business practices and company culture align with yours? It matters. Search through social channels including LinkedIn, X, Reddit, and Yelp to get an idea of what they stand for and the customer experience they provide because their level of service has your name on it.
What You Don’t Ask Could Hurt You
Not all storage and shipments are created equal. For sensitive products under the purview of regulations (think chemicals, food, beverage, or pharmaceuticals), warehousing and transport have added risk. How will those pallets affect your products? Are there cost implications to insurance?
Cyber-risk in supply chains is not an if but when. Trust in your 3PL provider must be earned, not given. Ask how they protect your information… and how often an online systems’ risk analysis is conducted on your behalf. For example, when storing product, WSI handles our customers’ product like it is our own, ensuring damage-free and accurate shipping, each and every time.
Time spent on the details of your product offerings has led your business to a growth cycle. When choosing a 3PL relationship, devoting that same attention to detail is just as important toward protecting your investment.