After
many years of working with Logistics Service Providers (LSPs) and many years of
supply chain benchmarking, I recently had one of those “duh” moments. It came
to me, “Why don’t we help LSPs build stronger performance and stronger
relationships though our Supply Chain Consortium?”
And that
leads us to where we are today.
In
general, LSPs do a great job of benchmarking their internal operations, and they
know how their own operations compare to others. They also have good, if not
great, internal measurement systems. But they haven’t placed much emphasis on
evaluating external benchmarks to supply chains at other organizations, which
can have a huge impact on their clients.
For an
LSP, external supply chain benchmarks and best practices data can be compared
against other LSPs or against shippers with similar operations.
The goal
of this external perspective is to really understand the competition and to know
where your performance stands compared to your peers. This external
benchmarking provides a basis for evaluating practices and processes to learn what
improvement opportunities exist throughout the end-to-end supply chain.
Metric
comparison will also help you understand areas of relative strength in your
supply chain practices. Your focus and energy should be placed with those
initiatives that offer the greatest improvement potential.
Through
our Supply Chain Consortium, we now have the databases and
tools to help LSPs successfully compare operations performance metrics and
identify improvement opportunities.
The
challenge is to take the first step into benchmarking with the expectation that
you will find meaningful results that are worthy of the time you invested. Our
experience has shown tremendous opportunities for LSPs that fully embrace benchmarking
and best practices.
Go!Go!Go!
Jim
Additional Resources:
LSP
Consortium Overview Presentation (PDF)
Podcast:
New Features for LSPs in the Supply Chain Consortium
LSP
Consortium Membership Benefits
Photo Credit: Horia Varlan