Tips for improving the shipping department

The internet has opened up a number of ways for companies to connect with their customers. Now it is possible for even the smallest business to sell and ship to customers all over the world. However, for organizations that are just entering this marketplace, figuring out all of the best practices can take time as it is a tricky landscape to manage.

A recent guest column from Small Business Trends was supplied by the Young Entrepreneur Council. It features comments from several different industry executives, where they were asked about the biggest challenges and that startups face if a large part of their business is shipping directly to consumers. 

The responses varied greatly, and included international orders and returns, tracking, rate shopping, customer happiness and feedback, prices, scale and volume. Logistics was also a major topic of conversation.

"We follow a golden rule at our company: The more times an employee touches a product in our warehouse, the more our cost of doing business increases," Will Land, an executive at Accessory Export, told the news source. "Logistics is the backbone of any successful company; don't short it on the budget. Ask employees what they need to be more efficient. You would be surprised with some of their ideas — we sure were!"

For any business, trying to figure this out on your own can be increasingly difficult. However, with the help of a third party logistics firm, any organization can get the upper hand when it comes to best practices of the shipping industry.