The new year is only days away! While some industries can hit the reset button on January first, logistics isn’t the type of thing to start with a clean slate overnight. Delays, backlogs, and supply chain snarls will continue to affect shippers even after the clock strikes midnight.
With that in mind, we’re compiling some of the major items to keep an eye on regarding supply chains in the new year. There are a lot of moving parts, as always, but these are details that should never go overlooked.
Don’t Overlook Logistics
With Q1 just around the corner, most organizations have had their 2023 strategies completed for quite some time. However, some organizations focus their attention on revenue, marketing dollars, and growth opportunities without thinking about the logistics. Without a reliable supply chain, opportunities can turn into disasters, frustrated customers, and renegotiated deals.
When identifying and defining goals—especially those related to scaling— it’s essential to ensure there’s a plan to audit the current supply chain, identify areas for improvement, and reach out to new suppliers as necessary. Luckily, if your organization needs help with this, we’re more than happy to help.
Create Proactive Logistics Strategies
You know the saying: plan for the worst, hope for the best. That’s the right approach to take with logistics, especially when it comes to navigating potentially devastating situations.
Supply Chain Brain recently unpacked how dire the situation really is:
“While most companies focus on their Tier 1 suppliers, according to Resilinc, 80% of supply chain issues originate with sub-tier vendors. Yet while technology is available to help businesses process large amounts of data, few have made the necessary investments in a hyper-connected supply chain across business functions — let alone through the multiple tiers of the supply base and downstream to the end consumer.
A McKinsey report, ‘Taking the Pulse of Shifting Supply Chains,’ found that only 2% of companies have visibility into risk across their Tier 3 suppliers and beyond. Adding insult to injury, most of these incidents go undetected — Gartner reports that ‘89% of companies have experienced a supplier risk event in the past five years, yet awareness and plans to mitigate risk lack maturity.’”
These risk factors can be mitigated in a variety of ways, including supplier audits, Transport Management Systems (TMS), and programs that enable transparency from the first mile to the last. These, coupled with an optimized supply chain and proactive mitigation strategies, can help protect organizations from what could otherwise be devastating situations.
Invest in Relationships
Relationships can play a major role in the success of a supply chain. Those can be communications with vendors, partners, stakeholders, team members, customers…the list goes on. While the supply chain may be going digital, it’s still important to invest in the human element and the people behind the screens.
Strategies should include relationship-focused tactics, like how team members will be updated on new policies, what vendor outreach looks like, and even if it’s time to look for another business partner, like a 3PL. While we can’t start fresh with shipments in the new year, it’s a great time to shift our mindsets about reaching out to others and actively working to build trust. In the end, it can be surprising how far a single strategic relationship can take a supply chain as a whole.
Speaking of relationships, when you reach out to TOC Logistics, you’ll be able to speak with a real human who can help with your unique needs. Did we mention each customer has a dedicated team? Well, now we did. Don’t wait any longer. Contact us today. We’ll help set you up for a year of supply chain success.