Logistics Management

Measuring delivery efficiency is important if you want to ensure customer satisfaction. There are certain aspects to consider so that you can do this successfully.

The advent of Internet technology has made ecommerce quite the boom that it is today. Virtually every website you can find on the web has a product or two to offer to you, plus with a state of the art delivery system that guarantees you on time delivery of whatever product you choose in a matter of days of weeks, wherever you may be situated in the world. This is precisely why there is a need for Internet stores to know how to measure the efficiency of their delivery system. Measuring delivery efficiency comes with a lot of standards, and even the topnotch cargo services, couriers, and other transpo networks would attest to that fact.

The concept of measuring the efficiency of your delivery system entails a lot of work, time, and effort. Firstly, there has to be much research to be done, and for that alone, there will be people specifically assigned to go into this. There will be key persons who would do the necessary research for this, as well as the monitoring, the gauging, the assessment, and even the interviewing of the customers regarding the promptness and efficiency of the delivery service offered to them. These key persons can actually be employed either inside or outside the company. Some companies do choose to hire third party services to do the research for them so that objectivity is ensured. For the most part, though, the people who do the needed research are employed by the company itself.

Before the onset of research, key operational aspects have to be determined and identified first. More importantly, the different points of delivery have to be identified. These include – in chronological order – the point of production, the points of storage, the point of sales, and the point of utilization. Most consumer goods are delivered from their origin of production right down to their points of sales, or in this case, the retailers from which the end consumers buy these products. These products can include canned goods, laundry products, cosmetic products, and household chemicals. The factory or the farm would be the typical points of origin for this scenario. In ordinary circumstances, some goods would have to go through a point of storage from the point of origin. This can be in the form of warehouses and this takes place before the products are sent to their points of sales.

In ecommerce, catalogue trading, and factory sales, however, the scenario is different. The goods are delivered from the production point or the storage point right to the point of consumption. Several points are then eliminated from the equation.

The mode of delivery is also factor point to consider. The different modes of delivery are land, air, and water. Some common means of transpo include small jets, trucks, vans, freight aircrafts, merchant boats, motorcycles, and even bicycles. The last element to consider is frequency of delivery. A periodic delivery schedule should be plotted to avoid unnecessary delay or even damage to the products themselves. Eggs, for instance, need more frequent deliveries, obviously.

Measuring delivery efficiency can be made easier by identifying the elements discussed above. If there are any weaknesses determined, then it would also be easier to determine how to remedy them.

Measuring delivery performance during financial recession periods is very important for managers to be able to make decisions about the balance between cutting expenses and continuing to provide good service.

Recession periods often bring nothing but bad news to companies and organizations, both big and small. Leaders and managers have to think and act fast in order to try and minimize the harmful effects of the economic downturn on their organization, in terms of both its performance and future growth. Measuring delivery performance during financial recession is one of those actions that can spell the difference between decline and growth during and after a low period.

In many cases, the response of an organization to difficult economic times involves some manner of cost cutting. This may take the form of budget cuts in the various departments, termination of employees, closing of factories or warehouses or stores, or bonus and salary cuts. These policies do indeed help to take the edge off the failing economy, since they effectively manage to reduce a company’s operating costs. However, if these are not carefully planned out, they may end up doing more harm than good, in the long run.

A possible consequence of ill-planned cutbacks would be a drastic drop in performance during the recession period. While some slowdown in performance would be expected during difficult times, ill-advised cutbacks can result in unacceptably low performance. This may well end up breaking a company’s reputation with its clients, leading to worse relationships that would carry through even after the recession has passed. Hence, short-term reductions in losses through cutbacks may seem like a good thing, but long-term losses due to client loss may exceed these as well.

Thus, it is very important to have in place a system for determining accurately the company’s delivery performance during periods of financial recession. With the data gathered from such measurements, analysts and strategists will be able to balance the necessity for cost-efficiency with maintaining a good level of performance. Detailed, real-time, data will make it much easier to infer trends and see the patterns because managers will be better able to know how exactly the entire supply chain functions.

The supply chain leading up to delivery is often quite long and complicated, and without relevant measurements, probably impossible to understand. Relying on intuition may work in a few cases, but overall, results will most probably be inconsistent. Smart managers strive for consistently effective decisions, and thus have learned to rely on objective data instead of just subjective opinions. The usual system of checks and monitors all along the supply chain should be further strengthened and made more intensive during times of recession, when each decision may prove critical.

In short, measuring delivery performance during financial recession periods often proves to be crucial, because it provides precious data by which to make effective decisions. Cutbacks in particular are decisions that should be carefully considered in order to balance savings with losses in performance. Keeping performance levels high during economic downturns, while it may prove more expensive in the short term, can really help the company keep and attract clients. In the long run, providing excellent service always pays off.