Moving Material: What's Slowing Down Your Shipping Process?

Your company's shipping process is vital, impacting everything from the total customer experience, to overhead, and more. Bottlenecks and other shipping challenges can increase costs, complicate experiences with vendors, and have other negative impacts on your business, and because of this, you may be focused on improving your process. Identifying common issues and finding a way to overcome these challenges are critical to your business shipping. 
Transportation Inefficiencies
Some companies have a straightforward shipping process, and this may include point-to-point freight shipping on a truck. Others may have a multi-leg process that includes rail, air, and truck transportation to move goods to the intended destination. Whether there is one leg in your process or several, you may need to analyze the process to determine how much time your freight is idle at each location, as well as how much time your shipments are en route. There may be more efficient processes available that can eliminate a leg, or that can reduce travel time between legs. A logistics specialist or contractor can help you to improve the inefficiencies in your process. 

Accounts Receivable Bottlenecks
If your shipping process includes billing delays, you may be coping with financial struggles while you wait for invoices to be paid. A great idea is to work with a factoring company like Factor Loads. A factoring company will forward the money due to you from the invoices, so you don’t have to wait several weeks or longer for the invoices to be paid. This can improve cash flow issues that may be causing an issue for you. 

Loading and Unloading Challenges 
One of the most common challenges in logistics and shipping surrounds loading and unloading boxes or containers, as well as trucks or other transportation vehicles. There are different methods you might use to overcome these problems. For example, larger boxes or transportation containers can be used, and you can invest in a forklift or other lifting equipment to facilitate the process more smoothly. Ensuring that the vehicles are on hand, and ready to be loaded when needed can also improve this process. 

Shipping and logistics are critical aspects of your operations that deserve time and attention to improve. Identifying issues is a first step to take, and you can spend time reviewing and analyzing your processes to determine where issues lie. Afterwards, you can research solutions, such as working with a factoring company to address issues that are slowing down your company's efforts.