BEST PRACTICES FOR MASTERING COURIER MANAGEMENT
There’s no one way to run a fulfillment company. Unlike many industries, this field is wide open to experimentation. You must choose how to operate, and in most cases, building your own custom business model is the best way to stand out.
While it’s nice to enjoy such freedoms, this can also pose unique challenges. For instance, it’s not always easy to institute effective courier management service practices. Even if you’ve equipped your enterprise with powerful courier dispatch software, you might not know how to put it to good use or which data points you ought to track.
Fortunately, you don’t have to settle for feeling lost. These pointers on effective courier software management can help you get started off on the right foot.
DEFINING BEST PRACTICES
According to industry observers, the courier management software market is set to expand steadily for some time. Thanks to factors like expanding e-commerce and increased awareness of business data, more supply chain companies are putting dashboards and other intelligent analysis tools to use.
Given sufficient time, the heightened role of courier software management tools may lead to industry-wide standards and practices. In the interim, however, you can set the tone for your business by devising your own guidelines and frameworks. As you define what constitutes best practices, you should consider factors like:
- What level of individual accountability you’d like to establish
- How much time and money you’d ideally prefer to devote to managing couriers
- Which types of warehousing data sources you want to track, and
- Which stakeholders should be responsible for maintaining the courier management service
ZEROING IN ON INDIVIDUAL STANDARDS
The previous considerations should help you get a better feel for what goes into managing couriers using software tools. Now you just have to buckle down and create concrete rules.
Imagine you’ve decided that your couriers, warehouse parcel handlers, and warehouse managers should all participate in collecting system data. You’ll probably want to codify the different roles that each employee plays. What better place for this than in the job descriptions and training materials you use to teach people how to complete their duties?
This kind of onboarding can take various forms. For instance, it may be wise to introduce warehouse intake staff to basic procedures, such as ensuring that barcodes are scanned into the system properly. A high-level manager, on the other hand, might receive a crash course about using their smartphone dashboard to track departmental performance.
Proper training is essential to instituting best practices that people follow faithfully. By comparing your business goals to the data and capabilities your courier dispatch software makes available, you can gradually hone your ability to use digital management systems to the fullest potential.
Courier delivery software takes many forms, and so do best practices. Before setting any rules in stone, get to know your tools and how their use impacts mission-critical business processes. Give your company the power to derive smart standards from tracking the data that counts most.
