What is trade logistics?
As a definition and explanation it can be said that trade logistics is understood to mean all logistical processes of a company in connection with material and goods flows as well as information flows within procurement logistics. This includes all trade logistics processes that occur with regard to customers, retailers, manufacturers and suppliers and the company, or logistics processes that occur both inside and outside the trading company.
How does trade logistics work?
Trade logistics works when the internal processes, flows of goods and information flows meet all the requirements of the merchandise management system and warehouse management by selecting a concept suitable for the trading company and an efficient warehouse strategy. This is the only way to ensure that the required goods and merchandise are quickly accessible from the warehouse and goods distribution centers and can be provided by the appropriate service partners for transport to the customer, retailer, manufacturer or supplier.
Basically, trade logistics deals with the question of whether a trading company handles certain goods directly and dispatches them through service partners to customers, retailers and suppliers or whether the goods are stored beforehand. The faster the goods arrive at the customer or supplier, the better. Managing this is a major challenge for every retail company and thus for retail logistics.
For the flow of goods and finally the trade to succeed without any problems at all, the flow of information and communication with the suppliers is of crucial importance. The information flows of the individual processes in the areas of logistics, warehouse management, procurement logistics and distribution logistics must be precise and coordinated.
All deliveries must be tailored precisely to the needs and requirements of the individual retail companies so that the internal processes and flow of goods in the goods distribution centres are not disrupted and, as a result, storage capacities are not overloaded. This also saves excessive storage costs that are inherent in retail logistics.
What is the goal of trade logistics?
The primary objective of trade logistics is the effective provision of all trade goods and sales merchandise in the goods distribution centres in order to minimise storage costs and to achieve the optimum profit for a trading company. Both the optimization of management processes and logistics processes in conjunction with a merchandise management system that meets customer requirements will ultimately make a retail company successful.
To ensure that certain products and retail goods are always available at the "Point of Sale" (POS), the flow of goods must be carefully thought through and systematically planned in advance. Once a trading company has understood the objective of retail logistics, this has the great advantage of not having to store retail goods and merchandise for a very long time, but of having to handle the respective goods and merchandise more frequently and send them immediately to customers or manufacturers through the appropriate service partners.
Conclusion
In terms of increasing digitalisation and customer expectations, retail logistics has taken on a very important and significant role now and in the future. This means that without a good strategy and a carefully thought-out concept, there is no well-functioning retail logistics for either industry or trade. Only by constantly developing and changing individual logistics processes in trade and distribution logistics can all customer requirements be met and thus a company's profits maximised.
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