Emily Newton

Developing a strategic partnership plan is becoming more common for companies wishing to succeed through collaborative logistics efforts.

For example, trucking partnerships can broaden a company’s reach, allowing it to enter new markets and expand its customer base. Alternatively, some team efforts involve business leaders using technology vendors’ products to improve real-time delivery tracking, optimize routes, and facilitate better data-sharing practices between logistics and trucking companies.

Strategic logistics plans also allow fulfillment and transportation managers to pool resources and overcome challenges that could lead to disappointed customers.

Expanding a Strategic Partnership Plan for Freight Data

Many collaborative logistics examples involve sharing freight data. The details of shipment weights, quantities and transportation modes can show valuable trends in consumer purchasing habits. This data-sharing helps business leaders make better decisions about timely deliveries and other customer-impacting necessities.

Executives and managers interested in how strategic logistics can work nationally can get inspiration from the Freight Logistics Optimizations Works (FLOW) platform, used by the United States Department of Transportation. Although its contents span beyond trucking data, this example shows how accuracy can enhance planning between multiple parties by supporting decision-making. A federal representative speaking about the tool explained that it aggregates shippers’ purchase orders 40 days in advance and provides ocean carriers’ data even earlier.

The U.S. government has used the FLOW tool for a couple of years but recently expanded it to include real-time shipment movement data. Recipients expecting incoming deliveries can use those insights to set more accurate expectations.

A more accessible option related to this example is to develop a strategic partnership plan that involves distributing tracking data to all relevant parties.

Many technology vendors offer such solutions, making them relatively simple to implement. Everyone can see a shipment’s location in real time, which saves customer service agents and others from looking up the information on the purchasers’ behalf.

This transparency is especially useful for truck-carried shipments of perishable or high-value items that people are especially anxious to receive.

Broadening the Ecommerce Reach Through Strategic Logistics

Many customers live in parts of the world so well-served by ecommerce companies that they can order items and have them arrive in hours. However, busineses and individuals in rural or less developed areas may not have that experience. Fortunately, that is starting to change, creating conditions for companies to appeal to more customers through convenience.

A modest but growing trucking partnership in India, for example, increases customers’ access to a global ecommerce site. This effort initially started with 60 trucks and 50 drivers. However, it has now grown to four times that size. Drivers cover the whole Northeast region, spanning 13 cities. In addition to the area featuring numerous rural settlements, it has frequent landslides and heavy monsoons.

Despite those challenges, this trucking partnership is mutually beneficial. The link with the large ecommerce company helps participants grow their business, and customers benefit from a more extensive delivery network. The business can also boost its profits with a larger reach. This partnership is a strong example of how the results often allow involved parties to accomplish more together than they could individually.

Tackling Transportation Needs Through Collaborative Logistics

A strategic partnership plan may come about when executives recognize pressing problems that they want to solve. For example, in a single year, trucks transported 11.4 billion tons of freight, highlighting the tremendous activities within the industry. All those goods need enough drivers to move them, but one of the persistent challenges is that the sector has an ongoing shortage of those workers.

One way to address this is to have two companies work together on the same goal. For example, a strategic logistics agreement could become more successful if the people involved consider the companies’ individual strengths. This is especially useful when one business has a strong presence in a particular country where the other is not yet established.

Technology is also a common and strong reason for becoming interested in collaborative logistics options, including those solely between trucking companies. Perhaps one party is a last-mile delivery provider, and the other offers an app for real-time routing or package location updates. Both of those offer perks customers appreciate, especially since they should help purchasers get their orders faster.

Statistics show more than 84% of people only buy from online stores that offer free shipping. They like saving money that way, but the savings only pay off when the deliveries arrive promptly and within the promised time frames. Strategic logistics agreements between trucking companies and app providers can meet those goals.

Emerging technologies can also spur and shape collaborative logistics. For example, self-driving trucks are gaining prominence and using them can reduce driver shortage ramifications. Even though many of these vehicles still need human supervision, using them can allow companies to cover more ground with fewer staff members.

Building a Strategic Partnership Plan

Whether the entities involved want to address driver shortages and routing concerns or begin catering to customers in more remote locations, trucking partnerships can assist with all these things and more.

However, such collaborative logistics plans will most likely succeed when participants understand each other’s services and set clear goals and associated time frames. Then, everyone knows their respective roles and responsibilities, increasing the chances of meaningful outcomes that show the possibilities to others in the industry. Taking the time to make a mutually beneficial strategic partnership plan creates the foundations for a long and fruitful business relationship.

About the author:

Emily Newton reports on how technology disrupts industrial sectors. She’s also the editor-in-chief of Revolutionized, covering innovations in industry, construction, and more.

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