Maintaining a competitive edge in an over-saturated, and growing, market like supply chain is tough when every other Logistics Service Provider (LSP) is trying to do the same.
Freight visibility and rate management are common areas where many LSPs start optimizing their operations. If everyone else is doing it - how are you going to stand out? Here are the top 3 ways you can differentiate your business in a saturated market.
Prioritize Customer Onboarding
Onboarding new customers is the riskiest time in any client relationship. You need to prove that you’re trustworthy, capable of servicing their needs, and deter them from looking at other solutions. In short, you need to knock it out of the park to stay on their good side.
Every customer has unique needs and systems that are often overlooked or compromised to work with the solution, rather than the other way around. Prioritize this stage during the onboarding process and emphasize your commitment to their goals. And then execute.
Reduce time spent onboarding new customers onto your platform. Hit the ground running immediately with rapid customer integrations that streamline the onboarding process for both your customers and your team. Alignment is key.
Improving the onboarding experience is a combined effort between solutions, sales, customer success, and IT. Start by making sure you're collecting vital customer details throughout the sales process so you have a clean handoff the moment you're awarded the business. Then ensure that you have a strong SOP template and clear steps to initiating the IT requests for account creation and any custom integration projects.
Invest in Unique Digital Transformation
Your customers choose you because of your individual combination of rates, execution, systems, and service. Since all of your competitors are digitizing, throwing money at more "digital" isn't enough. Spend the time to plan strategically and figure out where you want to spend your digital budget to enhance your strengths and make your digital offering align with your brand and service offerings. Be deliberate in identifying both a short and long term strategy.
Take a thoughtful approach to digital transformation now, rather than scrambling to slap a digital front end on your legacy processes. By leveraging a supply-chain-only integration platform like Chain.io, you can automate business processes that are slow or time-consuming, increase freight visibility within your supply chain, and gain new efficiencies and adaptabilities that your competitors aren’t keeping up with.
Maximize Growth Opportunities at Scale
The magic of the cloud is that everyone has access to infinite digital resources that can be deployed almost instantly. This means that you can provide innovative services that would have been impossible just a few years ago. The trick is making this work with your current freight execution, accounting, and operations processes. By cleanly segmenting your customer-facing solutions from your operations processes, you can present your customers with a more agile business without rebuilding from the ground up and avoiding “rework”.
Offloading your customer-facing integrations to a cloud-first platform with supply chain smarts and connectors to your legacy TMS lets you have the best of both worlds. You can continue working in the systems you're accustomed to while your customers encounter a uniquely differentiated experience that makes you look great!
We Can Help
Differentiating your business in an oversaturated market is a difficult feat, especially when everyone is using the same core software. Ensure your business stands out against the rest by partnering with an integration specialist like Chain.io that works with your team to create a completely customized solution built to bolster your book of business.
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