As one of the world's largest providers of third-party and logistics (3PL) services our client wished to be able to more fully integrate and align with the strategic vision and objectives of it's clientèle. After a brief assessment our recommendation was to pursue an integrated service strategy with the client in order to reduce transaction costs, improve service outcomes and to increase the overall volume of business with their customer base.

We found that much of the existing transaction costs in supporting customer relationships lay in the manual processes and customer service clerks required to essentially (and informally) "manage" operational relationships with their customers.

The Solution

Our team designed a solution that allowed our customer to integrate their transport and warehouse assets directly into their customer's warehouse and transport management systems such that they appeared essentially as customer assets. 

The Result

The result of this strategy were threefold:

1. Reduced Transactional Cost. As the work orders for goods storage and transport were automated and even initiated via the customer's own warehouse and transport management system, fewer clerks were required to manually key work orders. The reduced effort and cost savings allowed account managers to be more proactive in developing relationships and resolving issues before they became apparent. 
2. Increased Business Volume. As the integrated service approach eliminated many of the errors often associated with manual data entry and mis-understandings from faxed/phoned/emailed work orders customer service increased substantially. That combined with the fact that our client's assets were essentially viewed as shared resources made for substantially increased business volume overall.
3. Improved Partner Relations. As a result of the "close coupling" of services between the companies, our client was seen as a preferred vendor and set the "standard" for their requirements for other competing 3PL suppliers ultimately resulting in a much stronger, longer and higher margin relationship with it's customers.