Mid-market firm improves freight tracking, productivity with tools

小型企业如何改善货物追踪水平

By David Hannon
Purchasing

导读：全球化时代对小型企业经营而言，多少有点双刃剑的味道。一方面，互联网技术和“扁平化世界”为它们进入新市场提供了大量机遇。另一方面，如何使用有限资源在全球范围内采购和供应商品，对它们而言无疑是个巨大挑战。小型企业如何利用货物追踪技术降低全球运输的复杂性，以便提高企业核心竞争力。本文在这方面的思考无疑是极具价值的。

 
Running a small business in the era of globalization is something of a double-edged sword. On the one hand, the "flat world" and Internet communication have opened a lot of new opportunities for small businesses to buy from and sell into new markets. At the same time, the actual process—buying from and selling into global markets—can be especially challenging for a small business with limited resources.
    Technology to the rescue.Small shippers today are leveraging Web-based software to improve accuracy and reduce the complexity of global shipping.
    Take, for example, the case of Nutra Products, a formulator of garlic-based nutritional supplements. As a 10-person company, the employees at Fairfield, Calif.-based Nutra Products wear many hats—and nearly all team members have a shipping clerk's hat on their rack.
    Gretchen Reece, president of Nutra Products, says the company sources much of its raw material—primarily garlic—from China. The material is shipped via ocean container to the West Coast and then moved to one of two locations: Nutra Products' manufacturing facility in Utah or the manufacturing facility of their distribution/manufacturing partner in California.
    From those two locations, final products such as its Garlieze bioactive nutraceutical garlic ingredient and its various garlic-based powders are shipped to end-customers. Those customers can include distributors, health food stores, and dietary supplement outlets primarily in the U.S. In addition, Nutra Products ships samples to companies—both retail and manufacturing—around the world that may be interested in using or selling their products.
    The outbound shipments to customers and samples are shipped primarily in frequent, small quantities via package carriers UPS, FedEx and DHL. In the past, that meant selecting one of the three carriers, then filling out the carrier's airbill, setting a pickup or finding a drop box for that carrier, and tracking the various shipments via the carrier websites.
    "And setting up an account online with each of these carriers can be time-consuming, because their interfaces are not necessarily user-friendly, especially for a company like ours where everyone is shipping packages," says Reece.
    At Nutra Products, everyone ships something, including Reece, so it was particularly confusing for one staff member to track a shipment originally sent by another staff member. "Did you send that via UPS or FedEx?" was the question of the day.
But about five years ago, Nutra Products began using a (then) new Web-based software from Pointandship Software, which specializes in this area—shipping via multiple package carriers.
    "We started with an interactive demo of the software when it first came out and talked to some other users and customers of Pointandship's at the time," Reece recalls.
Pointandship's tool allows users to create air bills for use with the various carriers and then aggregates the shipment data from the carriers' databases.
    "I'd estimate that using this single platform is reducing the time spent shipping by 30%," says Reece.
    In addition to simplifying the shipping process, having all of the company's shipment data on one platform also provides much more robust reporting, which allows Nutra Products to better monitor its shipping spend and reallocate spending when it makes sense.
    "We're small, but we are a technology-friendly company," Reece says. "The positive experience we've had with this software has made some other technology decisions easier—as a company, we're not intimidated by technology as much."
    Reece says that all the streamlining done on the outbound side makes her wish even more that there was a similar technology for tracking inbound container shipments from Asia to the U.S.

FROM: http://www.purchasing.com