3PL: your logistics in safe hands

If your company has not yet considered 3PL (Third-Party Logistics), the best time to appreciate how it could unleash greater potential for you is now.

Third-party logistics puts your company’s products in the safe hands of a partner whose sole focus is to optimise its customers’ logistics. Logistics is their thing.

There are 4 key components of 3PL:

Your business can benefit in many ways from transitioning into using 3PL. For starters, 3PL providers do logistics more cost-effectively, and their overheads are shared across multiple clients. Your logistics bill will decrease.

If you want to expand your business, you won’t need to find a larger warehouse or run a larger fleet. 3PLs have the warehousing space and fleet resources that allow them to flex with the needs of their clients.

And because a 3PL’s core business is logistics, they pursue state-of-the-art efficiency. Leaving your logistics to a 3PL means your company can spend more energy on what it does best. 

Logistics is what gets a 3PL provider out of bed each morning. 3PLs have extensive experience and expertise in the following sectors, each of which has different specific needs:

Efficient storage and transportation of high-volume, low-value goods (e.g. agrifood) in as sustainable a manner as possible.

Timely distribution of products to retail outlets to meet demand, particularly in time to suit the seasonal demand of high-volume periods such as BCFM and Christmas.

Luxury brands have specific requirements such as specialised packaging, hyper-personalisation, and security and traceability.

The omnichannel aims to provide consumers with a seamless customer journey across every channel available to them: email, text, in-app, social media, mobile, online, in-store. One-size-fits-all no longer fits! (Read FM Logistic’s white paper on the topic.)

A 3PL can cater to the needs of the health sector. Perhaps it is a pharmaceutical distributor that complies with all applicable regulations and provides a supply chain with full traceability. A 3PL fulfilling this role will maintain stocks to ensure safe and timely delivery of healthcare products when and where they are needed.

A modern 3PL employs automation and advanced technologies such as data analytics and AI in pursuit of continuous improvement. 

Their warehouse management system facilitates seamless storing, picking, and packing operations to ensure the smooth and efficient flow of goods in and out of their warehouses.

Their transportation management system maintains a fuel-efficient fleet, employs air and sea transportation, and focuses carefully on final-mile delivery to optimise the distribution of products across our network. 

FM Logistic’s Control Tower is a centralised “nerve centre” that offers unparalleled end-to-end visibility and real-time monitoring of all supply chain operations. It provides critical insights via a dashboard showing data drawn from suppliers, manufacturers, logistics partners, and customers.

These technologies and innovations give us control across the supply chain. They enable us to respond in real time to bottlenecks and other disruptions to smooth operations.

And, very importantly, they enable us to find ways of operating and satisfying our clients’ needs increasingly more sustainably.

Once you’ve made the (wise) decision to engage us as your 3PL, we will recommend what we call a ‘staff takeover’. This involves FM Logistic onboarding your existing logistics staff. Rather than simply letting them go, transferring your staff to us keeps your company-specific logistics knowledge and experience and ensures continuity of operations.

This is how we do the transition. First, we will onboard your staff to integrate them into FM Logistic’s system. Then, once they are fully inducted employees, they will enjoy the development and training involved in stepping up to becoming logistics specialists in a state-of-the-art 3PL company that prides itself on providing a supportive work environment.

There are 4 major benefits of a staff takeover for our clients and their employees: