Running logistics yourself feels like control but at a cost. There’s the weight of staff management, the expense of investing in systems and fleet upkeep, not to mention the warehouse lease and the slow creeping realisation that all that effort could be earning you a profit instead. The businesses seriously reconsidering that approach aren’t doing it because it’s suddenly fashionable they’re doing it because the internal costs have just become too much to bear.
The shift towards outsourced logistics in Australia hasn’t been slow in coming but it is speeding up. Businesses that had to scale up fast in high-demand periods soon found that managing logistics internally just couldn’t keep up the operational ceiling would hit before the revenue ceiling ever was much fun to discover when your business is already in full growth mode.
What a 3PL Actually Brings to the Table That a Transport Company Doesn’t?
A national 3PL logistics provider isn’t just a freight company with a few more bells and whistles it’s a full-service logistics partner that takes care of the entire chain from receiving the goods in to unpacking and storing them in a managed facility right the way through to dispatching them via a national transport network and giving you real-time visibility all the way.
The difference is real and it adds up. A freight company delivers the goods a 3PL provider removes the logistics headache from your business altogether. And for a fast-growing Aussie business with a lean team that’s the difference between your logistics problems scaling with your revenue & your logistics problems being the thing holding you back.
Flexibility as a Commercial Argument
Flexibility is why Australian businesses turn to 3PL but it’s often poorly explained. What we mean by flexibility is daily/weekly/as needed service terms that fit with how your business actually works. Maybe you need more storage for a bit but not for years at a time. And we mean being able to move warehousing and transport capacity around the country without having to start over with a new provider.
When the pressure is really on during peak demand periods the value of a 3PL becomes super clear. You’ve got staff to hire and warehouse to rent and transport capacity to find all at a time when rates are high and time is of the essence. A 3PL provider absorbs that surge in demand using their own infrastructure without passing it on to you & charging you an arm and a leg.
National Reach: What It Means in Practice
For the 3PL provider that calls itself national, there must be something concrete behind such a claim other than the fact that it can cover national markets when selling its services. In order to be considered a national warehousing facility, a 3PL must have secure managed warehouses in every major state, rather than having a distribution centre in one city with freight forwarding across the rest of Australia. Local account management in every state means that the problem in Perth can be addressed immediately, instead of being routed to the head office on the east coast.
Interstate freight management within the framework of integrated 3PL is the one area where many providers make promises but fail to deliver. When the warehousing and freight transportation services are provided by the same company, no gap in responsibility and no information black spots occur when the shipment moves from the warehouse to its destination point.
Due Diligence When Selecting a 3PL Provider
The questions that one needs to ask during due diligence are not related to prices. Information on fulfilment accuracy, procedures for dealing with discrepancies in inventories and approach to addressing high spikes in demand will say much more about a provider’s performance under pressure. An experience of 40 years in the Australian market of Australia means that a 3PL provider has successfully coped with disruptions in supply chains, cycles of demand changes and network problems that a younger provider has never encountered.
Selecting a national 3PL logistics provider is a choice which involves operational continuity, not mere logistics. Integrated warehousing, 3PL and interstate transport services mean reliability that an Australian company requires to grow into something bigger than its current logistics capabilities.
