When have you looked at your supply chain network?
When is the last time you took a real good, hard look at your supply chain network? Answer honestly. Has it been a while? More than a year ago? More than three years ago? Longer than that? Now ask yourself an even more important question: what was the original logic behind those decisions? And the very most important question of all: does it still apply and make sense, based on what your business model looks like today???
Our experience tells us – probably not.
What causes supply chain bottlenecks?
Bottlenecks occur in company supply chains for all different kinds of reasons. Perhaps your existing facilities are at maximum capacity. Perhaps the demand for your products has doubled (or better yet, tripled), or you have introduced a new line of products. And let’s not forget about transportation. How do you manage the process of securing bids, negotiating rates and awarding contracts to actually deliver your products to the market? Is this a manual or an automated process? You can probably guess which way your friends here at Nexterus would tell you it should be handled.
Here’s the thing: if it has been a while since you took that real good, hard look at your supply chain network, it’s time. Like, now. Why? Because you can save a lot of money and run your business more efficiently if you think about your supply chain needs strategically and long-term, rather than on the fly. You may know that a transportation management system (TMS) will help you organize and segment your data. What you may not know is that through using a TMS to organize and segment data, most businesses reduce their costs by three to six percent, right off the bat, simply by making the obvious changes. This is before you dig deep and really start to look at changes that will help bring your product to the market in the most cost and operationally efficient way. This is before you consider how different your business is now than it was a year or three or even more years ago, when you first made those critical supply chain network decisions that are still in place today (but might not even make sense anymore). This is before you really think about where your business is going in the future, how you might grow and how your supply chain needs will grow right along with that big picture plan.
Should I use a transportation management system?
Business owners that use a TMS will tell you it’s one of the best business decisions they have ever made. They are the ones that don’t have to worry so much about supply chain bottlenecks and the impact they will have on operations and the bottom line. These are the folks who are getting a good night sleep. They aren’t up at all hours of the night worrying, and if they are, their concerns are probably not supply chain related.
Are you convinced yet?
Give us a call. We can tell you a whole lot more.
