Well-functioning construction logistics has always been crucial to you as a building material supplier. But the demands for more efficient deliveries are growing fast today. However, meeting customer demands for improved service while at the same time creating more efficient construction logistics flows do not have to be that difficult.
LogTrade has been helping construction companies for decades: from large and well-known suppliers of construction material such as Svenska Fönster, Daloc, Skånska Byggvaror, Bauhaus, and K-rauta to many small and medium-sized companies.
In this article, you will learn how we are currently aiding these construction material suppliers so they can both create efficient construction logistics flows and raise the customer service level.
Construction Logistics and Order Processes—Three Common Challenges
The logistics process used to sit in the head of one or a few certain individuals at our company.
This is what logistics managers often say after they have begun to use LogTrade.
When meeting with potential customers in the construction industry, we often get to see examples of different inefficient logistical processes. Three of the most common examples are:
- Shipments are booked manually, over the phone or by e-mail. The process is time-consuming, and the risk of errors and misunderstandings is high.
- Shipments are booked using several different systems through the carriers’ own individual portals. This means that the employees have to remember the login information for several different systems. Managing multiple systems like that is time-consuming and also comes with a high risk of errors.
- Incorrect transport information. Someone gives the wrong information to their carrier by mistake. The result is more manual handling, delays and sometimes additional costs added by the carrier.
Also read: Do not Shoot the Messenger—A Carrier’s Story
Like a Kinder Egg—This is how the Three Most Common Challenges are Fixed in One Go
With the help of LogTrade, the construction material supplier can attack all three problems right away. We begin by activating and integrating LogTrade with, for example, the company’s ERP system. That means that the logistics management system can start to work in time with the customer’s warehouse management and order management systems right away.
When LogTrade has been integrated with the ERP system, the need for manual handling is substantially reduced. That means that the construction material supplier now only needs one transport management process, regardless of how many different carriers or types of deliveries there are to choose from. The three problems mentioned above have gone up in smoke.
Everyone can Check Delivery Status with the New Construction Logistics System
The customers stopped calling and e-mailing the warehouse when we started to use LogTrade.
This statement is regularly made by warehouse managers after their company has switched to LogTrade.
Construction material suppliers set up their system based on variables such as which carrier services should be prioritized, and then LogTrade handles the rest.
The following benefits, among others, come with the new system:
- Adding a new carrier or shipping service becomes vastly easier. No detour through the company’s IT department is necessary anymore.
- Thanks to LogTrade, the construction material supplier can start booking added carriers immediately.
- Introducing the system and the routines to new or temporary staff is a quick process.
- Where is the delivery? Since the system is working in real time, all users at the company can access the information and easily send it to whoever needs it, such as the customer and the customer’s customers. Thanks to LogTrade, customers can also receive automatic order status notifications handled entirely by the system without the need for human involvement.
- In the construction industry, it is important that third parties also have access to the delivery status. When using LogTrade, not only the construction material supplier receives delivery status notifications via text message or e-mail. The retailer that will then sell the material to, for example, a plumber or electrician, will also receive these notifications.
- Customers and customer’s customers are happier when they always know where the material they have ordered is. It makes it easier for them to plan their work.
How Much Time Will We Save?
Conservatively estimated, booking a shipment manually takes approximately three minutes longer than if it is done automatically via the integration between LogTrade and the ERP system. If a construction material supplier books 10,000 shipments per year, the reduced working time is about 500 hours.
And then we have not even mentioned the savings that are made because fewer errors slip through. LogTrade reduces not only the risk of delays and outages but also the risk of additional penalty charges being added by the carrier.
