• September 17, 2020 3:57 pm
• by Ajanth

Offshore software development is gaining great traction in the Logistics industry where 3PL providers are one of their biggest adopters. Due to the highly complex nature of Logistics, many companies have outsourced it to 3PLs rather than setting up a Logistics team on their own. The best example of such a company is Amazon, the US-based e-commerce giant, which relies heavily on 3PLs to keep their business up and running. This helps them to access the best in class logistics capacity at a much lower cost.

If you are an owner of a 3PL business, you must be well aware of the fact that running a 3PL business is not as simple as it sounds. To ensure smooth business operations you often need to concurrently manage the physical areas (freights and warehouses), financial part, and most importantly technology. Out of these three, technology can be considered as a foundation that all the other areas are built on. Effective use of technology is used everywhere from invoice generation to freight tracking. In this blog post, we will point out some of the advantages that you get by leveraging offshoring as a business strategy. Before that, let’s analyze the importance of technology in your business.

How big is the role of technology in 3PL operations

technology enables six core aspects involved in 3PL companies operations:

• Raw material and production handling
• Operations planning and execution
• Freight tracking
• Facility Location
• Freight Management
• Customer Service

“A recent study by Gartner revealed that by the year 2022, there will be an 85% increase in the adoption of 3PL services by businesses.”

It is clear from the above prediction by Gartner that more and more clients are going to land on you in the coming years. If there is a rapid surge in the number of clients, there is a need for your business to deliver best-in-class services to your clients by developing solid IT capabilities that can efficiently manage warehouse management, fleet management, shipment delivery, and other processes that rely on technology. However, you can use the same cost-cutting strategy used by your clients. As we said before, you can accomplish this by leveraging Offshoring.

While software development is the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear about offshoring. You can also outsource other processes involved in your business such as marketing, finance, customer care, and sales to offshore companies. Outsourcing these core components with an intension to reduce overhead costs may not always work. It is always better to do these core functions within your inhouse team and outsource IT processes that are involved in your business to an offshore software development company in India. This is because technology is one way or the other connected with these core operations. Hence, leveraging offshoring to build and maintain your IT processes can come out as a viable business strategy. This strategy can be a great way for you to achieve customer satisfaction at the lowest total cost., which is the main value proposition of many Logistics companies.

There are many examples of 3PL companies gaining positive results by leveraging offshore logistic software development companies. Across the world today, most 3PL companies are having a tough job in hiring and maintaining their in-house developers. This may be also true for your company. This is because most of the developers out there believe working in logistics or any other domain won’t benefit their career. They prefer to work in a technology company as they can learn and keep up with new technologies and trends in the technology industry.

These are some of the other challenges you can possibly encounter in terms of technology:

1. Lack of enough tech resources to manage your IT operations
2. Software development costs
3. Lack of innovation in underlying systems

To address these challenges, you need to effectively develop and leverage an IT offshoring strategy that is responsive to your dynamic business needs, deliver quick results, and cost savings. Minimize Obstructions in Hiring Skilled Developers from Offshore Software Development Centers

Many global 3PL companies are overburdened with the task of hiring skilled developers to their onsite team since developers who have both the technical and domain-specific skills that adapt to your business ecosystem are extremely difficult to find. If you are one among them, offshoring is the right place for you to get your inhouse resource requirements fixed. Hiring developers from offshore software development companies has now evolved into one of the most adopted hiring strategies by global 3PL companies.

DHL is one example of one such 3PL provider that leveraged this strategy. DHL hired thousands of developers from offshore software development companies in India who work around the clock with DHLs onsite team to achieve 24X7production. Moreover, this strategy helped DHL to operate more efficiently and save millions of dollars from their business operations.