Tenaxx Logistics Makes Third-Party Logistics Easy

Third-Party Logistics

A 3PL or Third-Party Logistics is outsourcing all or much of a company’s logistics operations to a specialized company. The term 3PL was first introduced in the early 1970s to identify intermodal marketing companies or IMC’s in transportation contracts. A 3PL allows you to focus on other parts of your business as it allows you to outsource operational logistics from warehousing. This includes transportation, warehousing, picking and packing, inventory forecasting, order fulfillment, packaging, and freight forwarding.

Why Choose 3PL?

When the company grows, the need for warehouse space increases beyond that business’s ability to manage it. 3PL warehousing is always a good option for companies facing storage capacity issues. 3PL also provides more value including challenges with customer service, order fulfillment, returns, order tracking, technical services, inventory management and much more.

Types of 3PL

Depending on the services required there are particularly three types of 3PLs:

Warehousing:

This type of 3PL store, ship and handle returns.

Transportation:

This type of 3PL are specialized in the transportation between locations, transportation 3PLs include DHL, FedEx, UPS including the USPS.

Distribution:

This type of 3PL includes shipping and receiving the goods from one point to another.

Benefits of 3PL

3PL provides a great deal of value to the companies dealing with challenges such as rapid growth and changing market conditions. 3PL has several benefits:

1. 3PLs providers have a vast network of resources across countries, which includes warehousing space, trucking, and transportation fleets. This provides cost-saving options, as the company themselves will have to give in extra effort and double or triple the money.

2. As the 3PLs have a vast network across countries, the company can also expand its market outside its country and manage internationalization.

3. Leasing warehouse space and hiring a team of workers increases the overhead, instead of working with a 3PL can minimize the costs so capital can be directed toward return generating endeavors.

4. Customers can expect to achieve faster and more reliable delivery times, tracking systems have improved and customers can thus have order status, there are reduced chances of damage or incorrect product delivery. 3PL got it covered for you, all you have to do is select one Third-party logistics for your company and they will take care of the rest.

How to choose your 3PL provider?

The right 3PL provider can make or break your company’s logistics, customer service, company’s reputation and repeat purchase rate. If you are about to select a 3PL provider for your company trust someone with sales, inventory and other information at significant risk. Choosing the right provider is a balance between quantitative and relationship building.

1. Make sure that the 3PL can handle your current volume but also the forecast stock of volume, you want to choose a 3PL that can handle your business now and when you are at your full speed.

2. Check the provider’s terms and conditions and get a report on the company’s performance over the last few years. Seek references and information about on-time deliveries and delays. Your main focus should be on how the provider deals when there are problems.

3. Make sure your 3PL provider is using the latest technology.

Tenaxx Logistics is top Logistics Company in Cambridge, Ontario

We offer full-service 3PL – we’ll manage everything so you can focus on growing your business. Find out why so many people trust us with their third party logistics needs. Call our Tenaxx Logistics expert team today on +1(437)2200463 to know more about our services.

FOB or EXW, Which One To Use?

FOB or EXW, Which one to use? International Commercial Terms or Incoterms can be confusing for any new importers, as things to be aware of include trust, picking the best option and the best solution to ship and import. With this article, we aim towards the common incoterms FOB or EXW, which are the basic essential terms to be familiar with when importing for outside your counter.

FOB:-

FOB is an acronym for ‘Free on Board’, it is a port to door shipment. It refers to a shipping arrangement where the seller or sender has ownership of the goods only until when the are loaded.

After the loading process supplier takes ownership at the point of departure from the seller’s shipping dock. The supplier is responsible for providing transportation of the goods sold to a main shipping origin point. The shipping origin point is a port as incoterms are used for international trade which in turn imports goods through the sea.

When a buyer or the receiver gets the ownership of goods then it is considered as a complete delivery or delivery is accomplished. If goods are damaged in transit, the buyer should file a complaint with the insurance carrier. The cost of delivering the product to you are included but further, all the costs will be handled by the buyer.

So, in short, FOB means that the first seller sends the product which with the help of the supplier, and then reaches to the buyer who later has to arrange and ship it to the desired location.

Advantages of FOB:

As a buyer, you don’t have to worry about documentation in the origin country except for clearance as this goes under the supplier’s responsibility. If a buyer is withdrawing the trade the seller can still recover the goods before the goods are loaded to port, similarly, the buyer doesn’t have to pay if he doesn’t get the desired quality or quantity.

Disadvantages:

FOB disadvantages include situations when the supplier refuses to pay the cost that has been agreed upon and similar scenarios related to charges.

EXW:

EXW stands for Ex Works and it is a Door to Door shipment, all the cost, and the responsibilities are with the buyer. In Ex Works shipping term the only responsibility that the seller has is to ensure that goods are available when the buyer needs them. Ex Works term is used while making an initial quotation for the sale of goods without mentioning costs.

Advantages:

Buyer is the only one in charge, cost, risk, and transport will have to be dealt with by the buyer with which he can get the prices of all their costs upfront, Suppliers don’t add any margin to shipping.

Disadvantages:

Buyer is responsible for all the risks included within shipping to delivering at the door, Customs have different cost in countries which might lead to extra costing and the first time buyers don’t have an idea about the cost upfront.

EXW or FOB? :

Both these terms have their benefits and risks it depends on your knowledge of goods and of International commercial terms, with FOB being the most commonly used as it eliminates or splits the buyer’s responsibility, whereas in Ex-Works all costs and responsibility is to the buyer. FOB and EX Works both be used to get an idea about the costs and then make the right decision.

An Ultimate Guide to Plan Your Warehouse

Warehouse planning and implementation should be as efficient as possible to compete in the daily growing market. Fundamentals of warehouse layout designs are such that it accounts for the efficiency of operations, from stocking and refilling to order fulfillment, your warehouse design can either streamline your business processes or can slow it down. The following tips on how to plan your warehouse can help you achieve more efficiency, which can help you grow your business.

1.Define and Understand the objectives.

Objectives can be defined depending on the business such as to reduce cost and providing maximum customer services. Some need more inventory while some need more pick and packing. However, your objective must be such that it can be acted upon immediately.

2.Requirements.

Stocking and fulfillments are two of the major tasks that can either eliminate your burden or does the exact opposite. Once you get an understanding of what’s happening inside your warehouse you can organize items according to requirements, more frequently ordered products must be kept near the exit door so it gets easy to pack and pack them. Stocking must be greater than the demand to meet the supply.

3.Traffic Flow.

How great is the traffic, determines the design of the warehouse, if a warehouse with less traffic is built, it doesn’t need a large space and many employees while a place with great traffic will require much more space and employees. Traffic flow also controls the stocking and shipping from the warehouse, more traffic means more demand which needs greater space.

4.Space

How to utilize space, with a fixed length and width of your warehouse try to stack things vertically rather than organizing things horizontally. Keep similar things together and always have room for overstocking if occur, with some parts of the warehouse dedicated to office and some to working areas and empty pallet storage utilization of available space is done to increase the efficiency of the warehouse.

5.Implementation Plan

The focus should be on creating a clean and accurate warehouse, there is always a room for improvement, so Detail every step forward to create your warehouse layout design, Allocating suitable resources to tasks and projects in the plan. Checking what can be done to improve the design and when finished double-check everything.

6.What to do after planning?

Start implementing and try to manage inventory, a well planned and designed warehouse will surely help increase your efficiency and taking inventory management into factor you can deal with overstocking and stockouts. A planned warehouse will help you reduce pick, pack and shipping time and will eliminate any extra space and utilized it for other purposes.

How Tenaxx Logistics Can Help You

To know more about warehouse space utilization and optimizing your entire supply chain, go to Tenaxx Logistics and give us a call to find out which solution is right for you.

ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF DROP SHIPPING

Drop-Shipping

The dropshipping process is different from the traditional fulfillment process in that the merchants don’t have to keep the inventory. Instead, the vendor represents the inventory from your side. You only make a purchase from them when any customer place the order for some items and you sell them through the dropshipping process.
Dropshipping allows you to sell items without actually involving in the handling of inventory and shipping the items to the customer by yourself. This becomes a very flexible and time-saving order fulfillment process for merchants.
To know more about drop shipping visit

The Advantages of Drop Shipping

There are numerous advantages to drop-shipping your products, which include:

1. Not keeping an inventory on-hand:

One of the main advantages of using drop shipping is that you don’t need to keep the inventory on-hand. You only buy the inventory from your vendor when you sell something to the customer, hence you do not need to worry about managing the inventory.

2. No storage space required:

With the dropshipping process, you don’t need storage space as you don’t keep the inventory on-hand. Hence, your business will have little to no overhead costs of managing and renting the storage space.

3. Grow more business:

When you store and sell your own inventory, there can be many limitations, such as limited stock of goods and limited shipping location. But, with drop shipping, you can sell a wide variety of goods which represents by various vendors as well as you can ship the items to many locations. Thus, in this way you can grow more business.

4. Unlimited Products:

Dropshipping gives you the flexibility to sell those items which are not present in-store or kept in local inventory. It appears to your customers that they have unlimited product options. This is very useful for great customer experience.

All of these benefits are great. But, before you get ahead of yourself and start to drop shipping, you need to know about the other side of this fulfillment process.

The Disadvantages of Drop Shipping

Dropshipping has some considerable issues that you need to take into account before choosing a dropshipping option.

1. Low product margins:

As the product directly ships by the vendor to the customer without the involvement of the merchant selling the products, the markup on the price keeps on increasing. It’s how vendors make their profit in this business strategy. Although, in a competitive market, you have to continually lower your price to compete. This might can results in loss sometimes as you have to sell at very low margins.

2. Finding the right vendor:

Finding and creating good business relationships with the right vendors with wide product variety and right prices can be difficult. As dropshipping becomes more feasible for more vendors, you’re going to have to scan through a lot of posing wholesalers offering “wholesale” prices.

3. Relying on vendors:

The best and worst part of dropshipping is that you rely on your vendors to always have products in stock and to make correct shipments. But, what if they don’t have an item in stock that you just sold to your customer? Or, their shipment doesn’t reach the customer on time? Who will be responsible for answering the customers? As the vendors are completely invisible to your customers, hence it is your responsibility to handle these situations and cover the costs when you need to.

4. Using multiple vendors:

Merchants will often make deals with multiple vendors to get a wide range of products, ensure the products are in stock and select the best prices for different products, and ship from the nearest location to customers. It is not as easy as it looks, managing multiple vendors can be very complex. If you don’t do it right, it can cost you your business.

5. Shipping costs:

Keep a check on shipping costs when you’re using multiple vendors to ship different parts of one order, or product. If not handled carefully, dropshipping isn’t cost-effective for you anymore.
Dropshipping if done correctly can make a big difference in your business and its bottom line. But, if not handled well, it can cost you your business.

The Bottom Line

The benefits of drop shipping make it an attractive and flexible order fulfillment solution. But, there’s also a bad side of drop shipping that you must take into account. Ultimately, the decision on whether or not dropshipping is the best choice for you depends overall on your business type and requirement.

Contact Tenaxx Logistics

Want to find out more about our order fulfillment services? Contact Tenaxx Logistics today by filling out our online form or call us at 519-260-2738 and let us know what your business requirement. We’ll talk to you about possible shipping requirements and give you an accurate estimate for the services you need.

Check out these articles for further reading:
What is Drop Shipping?
Common Order Fulfillment Issues and How To Fix Them