In a competitive business environment, continuous improvement is key to your success. Partnering with a 3PL like NRI helps your business scale by using our experience and expertise to efficiently, accurately, and cost-effectively manage your inventory and fulfill your orders. By leveraging a 3PL’s expertise in building operational strategies, you can not only better focus on building your brand but also achieve operational excellence you may not have been able to on your own. You can dedicate more of your time to your core competencies rather than to learning an entirely different business of logistics.

Saving time starts with inbound logistics – when your product gets to your 3PL. At NRI, when our clients’ products are received, we verify the accuracy of received cartons against packing slips. This can be done on your own, however, when there is an error, there can be a significant amount of time investment that needs to be made in order to find and rectify the error. This is where working with a 3PL comes in handy. When an error is found in our clients’ cartons, NRI has tiered escalation types to identify the error and the quantities missing. These challenges can be a major time (cost) investment for an individual brand, but for a 3PL, it is just another day at work. We have the manpower and experience to identify any errors accurately and quickly.

Outbound logistics – when your product ships to your customers – is a significant area of opportunity when leveraging a 3PL. When you are working with a 3PL, you get an army of team members who know how to efficiently pick, pack, and ship orders – after all, it is what we do day in and day out! We have invested countless hours and dollars towards building systems, infrastructure, and processes that ensure timely, accurate, and yet flexible order fulfillment. At NRI, we offer valued-added services (VAS) that customize your order requests but do not take away from the efficiency of picking, packing, and shipping orders. All these tasks take time. If managing your own fulfillment, this is time that could be better directed to building your brand – directing human resources to design, marketing, and sales.

Partnering with a 3PL can additionally save you time negotiating freight rates. Recently, we mentioned that 82 percent of consumers prefer free shipping over a fast-shipping option with a fee, and how partnering with a 3PL can help reduce your freight costs. NRI has a freight team that acts as a liaison between carriers and our clients to ensure our clients receive the best freight value-offering, often better than most individual brands. Our large volumes also allow us to support multiple carriers and we negotiate with many national and regional carriers in the US and Canada, bringing significant freight savings to our clients.

Savings from freight charges also allows you to service your customers anywhere. 3PLs often have fulfillment centers in various geographic locations. At NRI, we are multi-country; with fulfillment centers in western and eastern Canada and the U.S. Due to our geographic locations, we have the ability to store your products on either coast of Canada and the U.S., making shipping costs and times lower. Partnering with a 3PL eliminates the need to find ways to best serve your customers anywhere in the world.

As your business scales, your operational strategy needs to scale. Partnering with a 3PL allows you to scale with ease. We have the tools, technology, and people to help you at every step of the way. We also have the space for you as you grow. At NRI, we have 14 facilities totaling over 1MM sq/ft of warehouse space and growing. We have the labor and technology capabilities across Canada and the U.S. to help your business scale and embrace your future.

Focusing on your core competencies and leveraging the strength of other experts will allow you to scale, improve productivity, and save time, money, and space. Partnering with a 3PL is one of the most significant things you can do to immediately improve the operations of your business and allow your teams to focus on building your brand.

To learn more, contact us.