The lead-up to Black Friday and Christmas is important for just about every business, not just in the logistics industry. In this blog, we are going to discuss how delivery businesses can prepare as much as possible for their busiest time of year!
Plan ahead
Planning is essential to ensuring a smooth and successful peak period. By preparing in advance, logistic business owners will be able to manage customer delivery expectations and prevent any unexpected frustrations that may arise. There is no such thing as preparing too early, but what does getting prepared really mean?
- Forecasting your demand
- Assessing the capacity of your supply chain, e.g. storage, packers, correct amount of self-employed delivery drivers
- Ensuring your subcontractor workforce can handle the surge in both parcels and routes
Increasing the workforce
As the number of parcels is much higher than usual in peak, it becomes essential to hire extra self-employed drivers – this recruitment must be planned in advance to ensure couriers are out on the road in time delivering parcels. By working with Wise, you are able to add your self-employed drivers in just 30 seconds!
As well as this, depending on the forecast in demand, business owners need to evaluate the number of routes they require to run during this peak period, which will also affect how many extra courier drivers may be needed.
Communication
Guaranteeing there is a clear communication line throughout the whole supply chain is a necessity in peak periods. Business owners need to make sure that everyone understands the increased level of customer demand, which will then create extra routes or parcel volumes for the drivers.
Automate tasks
To improve the work of operational teams and their performance, delivery businesses are constantly investing in tools to automate repetitive tasks, allowing them to streamline their business. The Wise platform is allowing logistics companies to save time, stress and money around the admin that comes with recruiting and managing self-employed drivers. Not only this, the Wise platform is allowing courier businesses to improve their offering to subcontractors by boosting take-home pay by up to £30 per week at no extra cost to business owners whilst also offering hundreds of discounts at major retailers.
If you’d like to learn more about how Wise can help your logistics business run more efficiently during this peak period, book a demonstration with our Business Development Team here.
