Competitive price and superior service quality are key to unlocking greater share of clients’ logistics spend, a new report by independent market analyst Datamonitor reveals. Called European Logistics Provider End User Survey, it found that respondents were less concerned with lack of geographical coverage, specific industry expertise, and limited service range.
The survey highlights that while clients indicated logistics providers are, on average, satisfying their expectations overall, they perform less strongly on the more important qualities of price, tailored solutions, customer service and reliability. It found that the hi-tech sector has the highest proportion of logistics spend that is outsourced, while Italy holds significant potential for the growth of outsourcing. Logistics providers need to improve on the more important qualities of price, tailored solutions, service and reliability
Datamonitor surveyed 700-plus managers responsible for buying logistics services in the automotive, consumer goods, hi-tech, pharmaceutical and retail sectors across the Benelux countries, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK. Three considerations most likely to result in a logistics provider losing business are inferior value for money, lack of reliability and inferior service quality.
Companies in different industry sectors have markedly different logistics strategies and requirements. This is reflected in their surveyed attitudes to the outsourcing of their logistics functions. The hi-tech sector has the highest proportion (31%) of respondents that outsource all of their logistics spend. The retail sector has the lowest proportion of respondents (16.7%) that outsource all of their logistics spend. In the specialised world of hi-tech, logistics is frequently regarded as a non-core business function that is best carried out by third party service providers; whereas in the retail sector, logistics functions tend to be more integral and so more often performed at least partly in-house.
