Information On Hiring 3PL Warehouse Services

Julian Sanchez / 2019-10-10

If you are a business owner who is managing a complex supply chain and you need to get good where they need to be on time, it makes sense that you would look for ways to improve efficiency as well as cut costs. Luckily, hiring 3pl warehouse services is a highly effective way to accomplish both of these aforementioned goals for a number of good reasons.

The following will take a look at some information you should be aware of when deciding to engage 3pl warehouse services.

 

Saving money

The biggest and most obvious advantage of hiring 3pl warehouse services is that you are outsourcing a major element of your supply chain to an outside firm. 3pl stands for ‘3^rd party logistics’, meaning that its an element of your logistical backend that’s being taken care of by a company independent from your own.

This has numerous benefits for you, chief being that it is usually cheaper to invest in storage at a third-party facility rather than pay to manage your own facilities. If your don’t move a high enough volume of goods to fill a site to capacity, then is there a point paying for the upkeep, security and associated tax of such a facility?

It’s often much cheaper for you to engage an outside provider who can allocate space for your goods in their secure facility. Devesting from dedicated in-house supply centres and reorganising the supply chain to rely on 3^rd party providers can be one of the best cost-saving measures a company can take.

 

Offloading responsibility

Another benefit of outsourcing to a 3pl warehouse is the fact that you will reduce your liability in several different areas. Because you are paying an outside company to store your goods at their facility, it is their responsibility the ensure that adequate measures are taken to protect your merchandise.

A 3pl warehouse that you hire should have its own security and fencing to protect it from being target by thieves. It should also be adequately protected from extreme weather.

If any of your goods are lost, stolen or damaged then the firm you hire should have insurance to cover the financial loss. All of this gives you extra peace of mind as the responsibility for the goods is in the hands of a professional firm.

 

Giving you more free time to focus on what you want

For your company, hiring a 3pl warehouse is going to give you and your team a lot more free time to focus on improving the other core competencies of your business. For example, you could spend more time optimising your recruitment and training processes or looking at marketing solutions to reach new customers.

Outsourcing one or multiple elements of your supply chain allows you to really optimise everything so that it runs as efficiently as possible. It’s easy to identify redundancies and leverage better deals when you work this way.

 

Flexibility to scale with your growing demands

Another thing that’s beneficial about hiring a 3pl warehouse is that the provider you engage will be flexible to your changing demands. This means that they can scale your partnership with them when necessary so that you can continue using the same company but upgrade your supply chain’s output.

Ultimately, hiring a 3pl warehouse is a clever move for any business owner who wants to cut costs in their supply chain.