The Importance of Logistic Efficiency for Startups

Starting up a business is difficult, and there are enormous challenges that any new entrepreneur faces. There’s competition from other businesses, learning how to manage growth, finding and vetting the right talent, and keeping up with ever changing markets. To be successful, one must also avoid common traps like failing to define a focus, not having enough funding, getting outmaneuvered by rivals, falling victim to internal company politics, being overly dependent on one specialization, not managing expectations, and an inability to bounce back from setbacks. It's important to capitalize on any and every available advantage you have for your company to stay ahead.

We’ve previously talked about how reinvesting profits can be a good idea. Did you know that improving logistical efficiency is another great practice that can put your start-up in a more advantageous position? If you didn’t already know, marketing logistics, which concerns the movements of vital information and products, is a key to customer satisfaction that has implications across all facets of a business. How can it improve yours?

First and foremost are effective rollouts. Efficient logistics can help you get your marketing message out before the competition. Any marketing campaign takes time to plan and coordinate, but having well-established channels of distribution can make that process that much smoother to prevent situations where the marketing campaign is ready to go, but you don’t have any plan in place for actually getting eyeballs on it. Logistics also help with synchronizing your marketing and production efforts together.

Gaps in messaging and product launch can be catastrophic if not properly managed, so timing your efforts carefully to maximize effect is crucial. Logistics also help with order fulfillment, ensuring reduced delivery times on products and inventory (a must for e-commerce providers) and further enhancing customer impressions of the business.

Speaking of the customer, improving your logistics can improve your ability to identify specific customer concerns. It might seem unrelated at first, but consider this: by keeping good track of where a product order is in the supply chain, you can make it a snap to address queries like “what happened to my delivery?” You can even hunt down and fix orders that have been messed up for whatever reason. It takes solid logistical analysis backed by product shipment data and precise implementation of tracking procedures to accomplish this, but that is exactly what good fulfillment logistics will get you!

In addition, you can more tightly enforce quality control checks on your merchandise. If there is a flaw in what you’re producing, having the entire production cycle laid out in an easy to interpret manner is what will allow you to immediately spot problems, find the source of defects, and correct them. Such control keeps the number of frustrated customers unhappy with what you’re sending them to a minimum.

You can even use efficient ecommerce order fulfillment logistics to provide the “icing on the cake” that might separate your service from a competitor’s. Options include advanced tracking options, product shipment details, etc. Think about how much extra credit you give to a company that goes the extra mile with customer service? You can easily evoke that feeling from your clientele by paying close attention to the information they want and providing it best you can.

If you think this is a complicated issue with a lot of moving parts, you are correct. Increasingly, startups are looking to 3rd and 4th party logistics solutions, companies that can handle large scale ecommerce fulfillment services and provide marketing logistics in a way that could never be done in-house. There are a number of firms that specialize in the distribution of goods and know the entire process. From securing suppliers to finding storage, to actually delivering products to consumers, these logistics experts can provide a professional perspective that benefits just about every business in aspects they may have never even considered. With the ever changing global consumer environment, being able to outplay your competition in terms of getting goods promoted and out to market might be the leg up you need for a growing startup business.