All businesses have busy seasons, but some are more dramatic than others.
Whether your big sales season is the back-to-school season, right before summer hits, or the period between Thanksgiving and Christmas, the struggle of balancing all the individual tasks necessary can be overwhelming.
To help get through the busy season, many retailers turn to third-party logistics companies for extra support.
If you’ve always thought you might want to use a 3PL to help through your busy season but are wary of the cost, here are four reasons you should give it a try:
Saves You Time
Getting ready for a big sale is time-consuming. If you’re already working with limited staff and resources, it can feel as if you’re quickly sinking beneath the to-do list and something’s always slipping between the cracks.
By hiring a 3PL to manage some of the important aspects of your business during the busy season, such as warehousing, picking and packing, and shipping, you free up your time to focus on other important things. That means more time for you to work on marketing campaigns, getting your website or storefront ready for the sale, and ensuring that you have sufficient stock of popular items.
No Seasonal Hiring
When you’re preparing for a busy season, you often have to ramp up hiring to accommodate the longer hours, higher volume of customer service calls, and increased processing of sales. This process can take up a great deal of time and money, and may even lead to frustration when you hire unreliable seasonal workers.
Rather than struggling with seasonal hiring and employee management, a 3PL can help you get the level of service your customers require without putting any burden on you. Your 3PL handles all the hiring of workers to accommodate your increased staffing needs.
Flexible Response
Sometimes, a sale goes much better than you anticipated, and you and your team struggle to keep up. You have to work long, hard hours to ship all the products to customers, and the phone is always ringing off the hook. Or, on the opposite end, you anticipate a very high volume of sales and hire extra workers. But the demand doesn’t quite meet the staffing level you’ve set up, so you’ve got several extra people standing around doing nothing.
A 3PL, on the other hand, is able to maintain a flexible response to your business needs. Is your demand for products and customer service suddenly sky-high? They give you the help you need to fulfill all the orders and phone calls without you having to find new employees with quick turnaround. And, when your business slows down at the end of the season, the 3PL simply decreases the amount of services you receive without you having to fire anyone.
Saves Money
Ensuring that every piece of your order processing and fulfillment is efficient and gets products from your warehouse into your customers’ hands isn’t cheap. You need to find the right packing methods and materials, choose the fastest method of shipping, and respond to customer issues and complaints, plus hiring enough people to staff every department of your business.
When you hire a 3PL, all those pieces of your business are taken care of for you. You pay the 3PL one rate and get the benefit of their trial and error, relationships with shippers, and flexible staffing. When you add up all the individual pieces, hiring a 3PL is likely going to be less expensive than doing everything on your own.
Flexible Logistics Solutions on the East Coast
At Cannon Hill Logistics, we’ve made it our goal to help you grow your business and take things to the next level. Whether you need year-round support or just some help during your busiest season, we offer customizable solutions to meet your individual needs. Call today to get your individualized quote!