Win customer loyalty with excellent logistics services
Balanced scorecard has proved to be an effective tool that communicates strategic vision and operational management. In other words it helps the company put strategy into action. BSC System works in the 4 perspectives: financial, customer, internal processes, learning and growth. Balanced scorecard was the first system that broke the tradition of measuring and focusing on financial indicators only. Creators of this system included non-financial indicators to the scorecard. Well, it doesn’t mean that financial indicators stopped playing an important role. Nothing of the kind! Financial indicators remain the focus for measures and response actions in the other three perspectives. As a rule, the company first says financial goals. It is not a secret that any commercial business, enterprise, company or organization aims at making money. With clear strategic financial goals it is possible to develop the rest of the balanced scorecard.
Efficient logistics department
Of course the choice of key performance indicators, measures and categories depends on the company strategy. It often happens that different departments for business units of one company should pay different attention two different categories of indicators. Thus, a sales department should focus more on customer perspective, while strategic planning department should take into account all four categories.
In case of logistics department it is reasonable to use all four categories to link strategic goals of logistics department with its operational activity. The goal of the logistic company is to timely deliver products or cargoes and spend a minimum amount of money for shipment. There are very many factors influencing the cost of shipment. An efficient and smart logistics manager should make the most effective use of transport, customs procedures, storage facilities etc.
Steps of BSC implementation
One should not forget about relations with customers. It is well known that customer satisfaction improves loyalty of potential and existing customers. Timely and cheap delivery is the best advertising for a logistics company.
Logistics metrics evaluates key performance indicators that directly represent efficiency of a logistics company. Such indicators as cost per unit, average shipment costs, truck turnaround time, load capacity and a number of others will draw a full picture of the shipment procedure. This will help reveal strong and weak points and introduce amendments to business processes, if necessary.
Of course, balanced scorecard should not be viewed as a universal treatment against all business problems. When implementing BSC if logistics department one needs to make sure that the department has educated and dedicated personnel ready to use balanced scorecard.
Tags: logistics bsc, logistics kpi, transport kpi
