By outsourcing the operations of your Marketing Supply Chain, you can optimize for savings, speed and specialized expertise. Outsourcing is a well-established practice. Payroll, IT, logistics, customer service, human resources and a wide range of other business functions are turned over to outside organizations because they do a better job for a lower cost and with specialized expertise. A Marketing Supply Chain should be outsourced for the same reasons. By moving the function outside your organization, you free staff to address your core business. You gain a number of other key benefits; high performance, expertise, cutting edge technology, financial accountability, economies of scale for sourcing, storage, fulfillment and shipping.
The first step to determine whether outsourcing is the right strategy for your company is to conduct a fact based comprehensive assessment of your entire Marketing Supply Chain. The Franke Marketing Supply Chain assessment examines the people, process and technology that encompass the Marketing Supply Chain. Franke's supply chain was thinly distributed, sluggish to respond to customer demand and inefficiencies that added cost and time to the process. However, by shifting mindset and resources, it is clear that the significant cant savings and delivery improvements available to this supply chain could deliver savings that could be redeployed into new marketing programs.
More importantly, addressing the human cost of the supply chain could also free resources to provide enhanced customer service and execute new marketing programs. Franke is far from alone in facing these struggles. In fact, it is clear that few companies have undergone an assessment such as this to truly map and assess their supply chain. With dollars and customer perception on the line, an audit of the supply chain cannot be put off nor can it look at a select segment of the process. An audit of the Marketing Supply Chain must include both physical cost and human resource expense. Only through understanding the flow and process of the supply chain can we truly understand where it resides within our overarching marketing operational mix and strategy.
