Growth is the goal for any business but it comes with new demands on your operation. In order to operate efficiently, you need the space, resources, labor and expertise to manage your increasingly complex and challenging inventory needs. The better your business is doing, the more challenging those needs are. If they’re handled inefficiently, it could undermine all the good work you’re doing.
For many companies, a third-party logistics provider, or 3PL, is a crucial step in their progress as a business. Integrating a 3PL into your operation’s inventory storage and fulfillment means bringing on the experts to manage the entire process for you. An experienced 3PL with sufficient resources can solve your inventory challenges, freeing you to focus on continuing to build your company. As you grow, your 3PL will be there to manage the orders rushing in for your goods and to keep your progress on track.
Here are four ways Distribution Technology can help.
Storage
As you grow and your inventory needs expand, it can become a challenge to find sufficient space. You can’t grow if you don’t have the space to do it in. Rather than devoting your company’s resources to storing inventory bound for distribution, you can enlist a 3PL with warehousing services to handle it. Because you are sharing space with their other clients, it will be less expensive to store your goods. You will not need to spend your time and money purchasing or renting space and managing its equipment and upkeep. A 3PL with extensive warehouse space, however, is built to accommodate that growth.
Fulfillment
Just as a 3PL brings scalability to storage, it does the same for fulfillment. A 3PL will keep your order fulfillment costs down by managing that process on an ongoing basis. A 3PL can manage receiving, storing, packing and shipping services for your goods, ensuring that they move quickly and accurately through the fulfillment and distribution process.
Management
Demand for most products will fluctuate throughout the year. A 3PL can help your business navigate those ebbs and flows of demand, scaling resources to meet your specific needs. When demand surges and you need more space and labor, your 3PL can adapt. And when a slower period arrives, your 3PL can scale back. In this way, you can maintain appropriate stock levels, minimize wasted inventory and avoid losing income because your stocks drop too low. This level of flexibility reduces costs and makes for a more efficient operation.
Visibility
A 3PL can provide businesses with a more clear-eyed view of their inventory levels with sophisticated technology tools. At Distribution Technology, we offer a portal that clients can visit to see an updated status of their inventory. After a shipment is completed and transactions are updated, our database reflects the new inventory levels within 20 minutes, giving our customers near-real-time insight into their inventory to track stock levels at all times. This helps not only with managing your inventory in the present, but it also aids forecasting for future needs. This helps companies striving to avoid understocking or overstocking their goods.
Distribution Technology’s warehousing and distribution operations store and stage your goods in more than 1.2 million square feet of organized warehouse space. We understand the ever-changing demands, seasonal pressures, and unpredictability you face in your business, so our warehouses are designed to meet your fluctuating needs. Our network of facilities hold a wide range of products across many sectors of industries and are equipped with temperature-controlled, food-grade, secure storage — as well as additional storage for chemicals and a designated area for hazardous or flammable materials. For more information, contact us today.