2025 Content Guide from Inbound Logistics

CONTENT Marketing

Get your important message into the marketplace through custom, targeted editorial content.

KNOWLEDGE BASE Highlight your expertise and opinion to our readers—and position your company as an industry leader.

THOUGHT LEADERS Emphasize your thought leadership to our responsive audience with this Q&A, featuring a leading executive’s cogent answers to important questions.

SOLVED This special case study outlines a supply chain problem and how you provided the solution. This is your chance to showcase your company’s problem-solving prowess.

THOUGHT Leaders SPONSORED CONTENT

Optimizing Customer Service and Corporate Value

Q How can a company maximize customer service and corporate value? A The first interaction is often with the customer service department. This team makes the first impression, setting the tone for the relationship and the perception of how your brand can fulfill their needs. Suppose the experience is pleasant and productive; your credibility increases. The customer will be uncertain and doubtful if it’s less than ideal. Without a strong foundation, the probability of your customers considering a competitor sig- nificantly increases. Retaining customers and reducing churn is crucial to the bottom line, and, in the age of online reviews, a positive customer experience is also a profit driver. Q How can the internal silos impacting the customer experience be better connected and streamlined? A All customer-facing teams should have reliable processes that alleviate internal silos and deliver seamless customer care. If a customer needs to repeat activities, such as requesting an invoice, filing a dispute, tracking a shipment, or inquiring about a pick-up, it diminishes the value of the relationship. Customers demand a seamless experience that minimizes time investment and stress level. Evaluate your customer experience and remove blockers or dead ends. Staff training is also essential to ensure consistency of service. Q How would you describe most customer service departments’ visibility of their companies’ supply chains? How can that be improved?

A Visibility into the shipment lifecycle is critical to the team’s ability to resolve concerns during the first interaction. DDC’s partners have a variety of technologies that allow us to track and monitor all shipments throughout the entire journey. Access to CRM, TMS, and partner sites allows agents to view the status in real-time. This is key when locating a delayed or misplaced shipment or changing the routing number on the fly. For each of our tailored Customer Care pro- grams, we have access to a variety of tools to gather information, share updates, and help resolve any glitches in the shipment process. If 100% real-time visibility is unavailable, DDC will advise on the best technology solutions to close the gaps. Q How should operational support address critical delivery failures or supply disruption? How does DDC tackle these challenges for clients? A Weather, traffic, technical issues, driver problems, and human error impact this industry. With consistent training, business continuity processes, disaster recovery plans, and equipping your customer service team to be frontline problem-solvers, you will calm customers and find the solutions to meet their needs. DDC’s goal with our Customer Care suite is to always go beyond what is expected. Every cus- tomer should not only be satisfied but delighted with the outcome. This builds loyalty and con- fidence in your brand. This level of service is critical to customer retention and growth.

Donna Kintop SVP of Client Experience, North America DDC FPO www.ddcfpo.com

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HOW (HELP ON THE WAY) This practical, step-by-step “how- to” article is designed to be used, redistributed, saved, and referred to again and again. HOW appears—along with your exclusive ad—in magazine, web, and app editions.

CUSTOM CONTENT Celebrating an achievement, milestone, or new offering? This page can highlight recent accomplishments, spotlight notable corporate news, or enumerate any new offerings and service upgrades.

ABOVE & BEYOND: EXCELLENCE IN CUSTOMER SERVICE This sponsored content profiles your most notable customer service achievements.

SPONSORED BY R2 LOGISTICS

A large pharma company teams up with Hub Group to achieve compliance with the best service at a reasonable cost.

B eing entangled in complexity is typical of some companies’ supply chains. Companies in highly regulated sectors often bear the burden of managing increasingly complex, intricate supply chains while facing a greater level of scrutiny than other businesses. Fines can even be incurred for severe supply chain disruptions. Hub Group professionals understand, and they regularly apply technologically advanced, scalable solutions to simplify these complexities. The supply chain team for a large pharmaceutical company realized it needed a third-party logistics (3PL) provider when it was so tied up in the tedious process of assigning carriers for its large portfolio of products—each with a diverse set of compliance and customer requirements—that it couldn’t advance its supply chain strategy. The company sought to consolidate its carrier base and reduce the effort to manage its massive supply chain. Upon learning of Hub Group’s outsourced 3PL services, the supply chain team saw how it could apply Hub Group’s tools and processes across its entire network to fulfill a simple, central objective: Achieve compliance with the best service at a reasonable cost. Using optimization tactics, deep carrier relationships and creative thinking, Hub Group has simplified this complex network and continuously pursues even greater efficiencies.

FOUR STEPS TO LOGISTICS SIMPLICITY 1. First, Hub Group conducted a full analysis of the company’s outbound network. Its network included hundreds of customers and even more carriers, each with its own unique requirements and processes. The analysis identified portions of the network that were prime candidates for optimization and uncovered carrier payments that were significantly higher than Hub Group’s negotiated carrier contracts. 2. Hub Group then modeled every feasible scenario, sometimes in excess of 40 in the span of just a few weeks. Each scenario was accompanied by recommendations on how to achieve the perfect balance of the customer’s three core variables: compliance, service and cost. 3. Recognizing efficiency that could be achieved with a single point of contact, Hub Group inserted itself as the intermediary between the carrier network and the manufacturer. This change streamlined communication and delivered a single point of accountability for the outbound network while nimbly managing carrier compliance, performance and pricing. 4. Hub Group then applied its leading

How to Manage LTL Spend with a TMS If you don’t know how much your company spends on LTL shipments, you’re not alone. Because of the complex nature of LTL moves and the complicated pricing structure, you may be paying more than you need to and leaving margin dollars on the table. For small to mid-size companies that ship LTL several times a week, but don’t have an in-house transportation director and analysts on staff, managing a $10 million annual LTL spend can be challenging. There’s a tipping point of around two or more LTL shipments per day where managing LTL manually becomes overwhelming for existing staff. Partnering with a 3PL that offers a comprehensive transportation

SUSTAINED, SCALABLE RESULTS With a focus on stability, Hub Group quickly engineered and executed its scalable solutions to preserve and support customer relationships. The scalability of Hub Group’s services was the highlight of the solution. As the customer identifies a new opportunity or a problematic segment of its supply chain, Hub Group works alongside its team, feeding it data, analysis and recommendations as needed. Hub Group continues to independently monitor the supply chain, pinpointing inefficiencies in existing solutions, challenging processes and maintaining a collaborative approach to continuous improvement. Hub Group is a world-class supply chain solutions provider that offers multi- modal transportation services, including intermodal, truck brokerage, dedicated and logistics services. Employees deliver innovative solutions to help customers better control supply chains and their costs.

7 THINGS A TMS CAN DO FOR YOU

management system can help your enterprise take control of LTL spend. A TMS geared toward mid-size shippers can be like a travel booking site where you can compare rates for carriers all at once. Rather than making phone calls to get quotes, the TMS pulls quotes from three carriers and allows the shipper to make an informed decision without a lot of back- and-forth with phone calls and emails. Like an airline booking site, the user inputs origin, destination, and freight characteristics. The system connects to multiple LTL providers to retrieve quotes. The shipper can select the carrier, rate, and service level that fits their budget and shipping requirements. The system automates the quote and booking process and allows for gathering and analyzing data about your transportation spend that isn’t very easy to manage with spreadsheets. The data will help CFOs analyze the transportation spend, which can be a hidden expense. The TMS can shine a spotlight on transportation costs so that companies can be assured their money is being well spent. Larger companies may have the headcount for a transportation analytics staff. With a comprehensive TMS, smaller organizations can benefit from the same functionality. In partnering with a 3PL, the shipper can use a DIY model or a DIFM, or “do it for me” model. The 3PL can handle the quote and booking process, or the shipper can manage that internally. As the competitive landscape in global and domestic supply chains gets tougher every day, managing transportation spend is a powerful tool for maximizing a company’s financial health. A TMS can help a company get a handle on the variables in the supply chain, and reduce the opportunity to make mistakes due to lack of information. Adopting a TMS to simplify the LTL quote and management process can reduce spend, improve service, and give management the information they need to manage for success.

O 1. GET MULTIPLE RATE QUOTES: Stop back-and-forth calls. O 2. BOOK FREIGHT: Use a click instead of a phone call. O 3. PRINT BILLS OF LADING: Automate document flow. O 4. PRINT PACKING LISTS: Use a single source of information. O 5. TRACK AND TRACE: Get information instantly instead of dispatchers calling drivers. O 6. PROOF OF DELIVERY: Speed up payments with real-time documentation. O 7. FREIGHT CLAIMS AND AUDITING: Analyze spend for misclassifications and mistakes.

technology and internal business intelligence teams to develop a

customized dashboard tying every point in the customer’s network to a central system. The dashboard provides a financial pulse of its network along with key insights to performance and compliance.

Visit www.hubgroup.com for more information.

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38 Inbound Logistics • April 2020

Ask about custom whitepaper creation

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