Logistics Consultants - What Exactly Am I Looking For?

Logistics consultants are a fantastic way of keeping ontop of your inventory management and the administration of your business’s assets. All this at a very reasonable rate, and giving you the freedom to focus on other areas. However you need to make sure that your consultant is actually capable of doing their job, and making sure this is the case should be done before they’re even hired. Likewise you need to make sure you’re choosing your consultant because they’re actually capable, not because they are cheap.

Selecting your logistics consultants carefully is essential if you want a long and successful working relationship with them. Fortunately there are a number of way in which you can ensure that the consultant in question is a winner or a loser.

1. Check Their Past Experience All logistics consultants should be able to provide, upon request, a record of the types of clients they’ve done work for in the past. This should include things like the sort of tasks they were asked to do, the time length of the arrangement and their technical certification.
2. Check Up Their References Relating to the above, phone up their past customers and ask for their opinion about the consultant’s work. Try to get a good idea of how they operated and what the working relationship was like. You should also check up the validity of any certification.
3. Select Experience Make sure the consultant you choose is one with a long, established history and a solid background. They should also be very solid financially -- you don’t want to hire a consultant who may have to file for bankruptcy next year. The company should also have good resources, and a tried and true methodology for their work.
4. Do They Talk or Listen? Ideally, when contacting logistics consultants, the consultant should spend a lot of time trying to understand your business and its needs. In that, he should spend much of the interview asking questions, listening carefully, and talking only when prompted to or if it’s natural to do so. Consultants who talk too much are more interested in selling themselves than they are in setting up an effective relationship.
5. Are They Flexible? Consultants should be willing to work around, preferably with, your company’s needs and preferences. It should not demand you conform to their own standards, and it should also adapt easily if your company should suddenly change. Doing so will ensure a healthy partnership for years to come.

Use these 5 factors to guage how your prospective consultant does business and you will be well on your way to reaping the benefits of great inventory optimisation and warehouse design.