There’s a lot that goes into growing a business. From marketing to ensuring healthy cash flow, you’ll need to pay careful attention to the approach that you’re taking, factoring in the changes you expect over the coming months and years.
For many businesses, the logistics will be a central area that requires substantial attention. From figuring out your needs to predicting your likely return on investment, here’s where to start when designing your new truck-loading solution.
What are your needs?
Before we get started, it’s important to note that appropriate loading solutions geared towards growing logistics capacities will differ depending on your specific needs. As a result, prior to actually starting your search, you’ll need to think about the kinds of items you expect to load, the risks that they pose, and the volume at which you’ll need to be loading them.
Based on these factors amongst others, you can then start to think about solutions that are geared towards your actual needs, rather than solutions that meet random abstract metrics of success.
Automate early on
Businesses often decide to do things the hard way early on, as a way of saving money and resisting early investments in seemingly ‘non-essential’ areas. While we certainly understand the logic behind this strategy, if you’re expecting or aiming for growth, we believe that it can be misguided.
In the context of truck loading, we recommend implementing an automated loading solution from somewhere like Joloda Hydraroll sooner rather than later. While it obviously depends on your business having sufficient cash flow or access to credit, the earlier you implement such a solution, the earlier you can start to benefit from it.
Factor in future growth
While the solution that you adopt needs to be able to deal with your current needs, you also need to factor in future growth. You absolutely don’t want to spend substantial amounts of money on an apparently perfect system that’s no longer able to cater to your loading volume in just a few years time. Based on realistic growth predictions, you can work out whether the solution you go with is up to the challenge.
Cost-benefit analysis
Before committing to any solution, carry out a final cost-benefit analysis. While most automated loading solutions do tend to result in very quick returns on investment, you need to make sure that this will apply in your case as well.
By comparing the maximum amount you can predict to spend on integrating your new system with the minimum savings you predict you’ll make, you can check whether it’s an investment you can afford to make even in the worst-case scenario.
It’s easy to overlook the importance of optimising logistics processes, especially in the early stages of setting up a business. While branding and building partnerships are undoubtedly important, you can’t avoid the nuts and bolts of running a business, and you can only ignore these areas for so long. By thinking about how your system will allow your business to grow, you can ensure that you get on the right track early on, maximising any potential benefits as soon as possible.