Canadian Logistics Industry Analysis
The Canadian logistics industry has been experiencing positive growth over the past few years, despite the 2008 recession and evolving regulations. However, the challenges that companies in the Canadian logistics industry face are rising. To keep pace with the industry changes and demands, logistics companies in Canada are necessitated to build and maintain efficient and effective logistics and supply chain practices. Also, keeping a constant watch on the key competitors and taking measures to ward off challenges is becoming inevitable.
This success story highlights how our inventory management solution helped a logistics company in Canada to slash operational cost and time to market. Also, find out the approach undertaken by our experts to help the client enhance business efficiency and reduce the order-to-ship time from 7 days to 48 hours.
Business Challenge
The client is a logistics company in Canada. The client’s services include cross-border services, returned goods management, transportation management, warehousing, and distribution.
Our client, a logistics company, faced challenges in managing their supply chain operations and meeting their clients’ demands and expectations. Also, with over 5 warehousing and distribution sites spread across different places in Canada, the client faced challenges in communicating delivery needs between staff, drivers, and each distribution center. This impacted the company’s logistics and distribution processes.
As such, the company in the Canadian logistics industry approached the experts at Infiniti Research for a solution. By leveraging Infiniti’s expertise in offering inventory management solution, they wanted to streamline and improve their deliveries to warehouses and focus on their core business rather than transportation concerns.
Other challenges faced by the client were:
Canadian logistics industry challenge #1: Improving communication
As customers in Canada demanded complete transparency into where their orders are in real-time, the client realized the need to employ real-time order tracking and text delivery notification processes. Also, the client wanted to identify the strategies undertaken by the top companies in the Canadian logistics industry to track the flow of inventory through and around the distribution center, monitor product velocity, and provide advance notice of arrivals.
Canadian logistics industry challenge #2: Unexpected weather
Unpredictable and frequently changing weather was a major challenge for companies in the Canadian logistics industry. Therefore, with Infiniti’s help, the company in the Canadian logistics industry wanted to build contingency or ‘back-up’ plans to efficiently deal with unexpected weather changes and market conditions.
Canadian logistics industry challenge #3: Identifying third-party logistics providers
With challenges rising in managing manpower, companies in the Canadian logistics industry were pressurized to outsource work to third-party logistics providers during periods of high demand. The client, therefore, wanted to identify the right partners to support them in their operations during periods of peak demand.
Canadian logistics industry challenge #4: Reverse logistics management
By leveraging Infiniti’s expertise in offering inventory management solutions, the Canadian logistics industry client wanted to implement a sound reverse logistics framework to efficiently manage the product return process.
Solutions Offered
As a part of the inventory management solution, our experts conducted the Canadian logistics industry analysis. This phase of the engagement involved analyzing factors that impacted product demand in the market. In addition, the engagement involved thoroughly analyzing periods where inventory was out of sync with demand.
The next phase involved a demand management study of the Canadian logistics industry. In the phase, our experts helped the client to analyze the supply-demand patterns for the past five years and track periods where demand peaked or experienced a significant drop.
The third phase involved inventory forecasting and supply cost analysis. In this phase, our experts helped the client to forecast the target stock levels that are required to meet the rising demand for goods and services. Also, our experts tracked expenses scattered throughout the supply chain, including freight, volume, discounts, and warehousing.
Lastly, by conducting a competitive intelligence study of the Canadian logistics industry, our experts helped the client to understand approaches undertaken by the top logistics companies in Canada to efficiently deal with unexpected weather changes and market conditions. In addition, the client was able to identify cost-effective technologies leveraged by the top companies in the Canadian logistics industry to track the flow of inventory throughout.
Results Obtained
The client was able to build contingency or ‘back-up’ plans by identifying the potential demand for inventory in advance. Also, the client was able to adopt cost-effective technology to increase real-time visibility into their supply chain operations.
They even enabled text delivery process to keep their customers updated and provide advance notice of arrivals. This eventually helped the company in the Canadian logistics industry to enhance the customer experience. Also, by having a proper track of the flow of inventory through and around the distribution center, the client was able to reduce communicating gaps between staff, drivers, and distribution center.
In addition, the client was able to implement a sound reverse logistics framework to efficiently manage the product return process. And, they were able to identify the right partners to support them in their business operations.
Efficient inventory management helped the client to slash operational cost and time to market. In addition, the client was able to improve business efficiency and reduce the order-to-ship time from 7 days to 48 hours.
