If your business is expanding into new markets and you need to source for additional warehouses, consider your approach to finding the right fit. If you’re exclusively using search engines to find facilities in the area, you may end up sacrificing quality and cost-efficiency. Search engines can only show you the location of a warehouse and direct you to its website; they can’t provide all the information you need to make a strategic and informed decision for your business.
For example, you might be able to find a list of services the facility offers, but you won’t know how well they perform those services, or if their pricing model will be efficient for your business. You may know their delivery hours, but you won’t know how well they handle last-minute orders or weekend operations.
A search engine can’t tell you how safe, clean or organized the warehouse is, or if the staff is familiar with handling your type of product. You won’t know what kind of (if any) warehouse management software they use to track inventory and improve performance or if you’ll have any visibility into where your inventory is and where it’s going.
Most importantly, you won’t know how well the facility can scale with your business. How much room do they have for your business to grow? Can they be a partner to you as you add more inventory or bring on new products that have different storage or certification requirements?
A search engine can show you warehouse options in the area, but to ensure you’re making the most strategic choice for your business, find a partner who can provide vetted warehouse options optimized for your supply chain.
Stord is the Cloud Supply Chain—empowering brands to build sophisticated, agile, and integrated logistics networks, for a fraction of the cost (and even less time than) it would take to build themselves. To learn more about the Cloud Supply Chain and our services, visit https://www.stord.com/stord-supply-chain-cloud.
