Edward Hill-Male, Strategic Client Director at SEKO Logistics, explains how technology and innovation are transforming SEKO’s logistics service.
Digitization of the supply chain is having a transformative effect on SEKO’s three core services — freight forwarding, ecommerce and white glove. Here’s how the process of turning analogue supply chain processes into digital ones is not just reshaping our offering but also elevating our customer experiences.
WHAT ARE THE THREE PILLARS OF LOGISTICS?
First, we’ll describe the three services and then how they are being impacted by digitization.
FREIGHT FORWARDING
Our first pillar is our freight forwarding services, which describes your general inbounding and out-bounding of shipments. This aspect is generally B2B, it’s your standard sea, air, and road freight shipments. Freight forwarding is an old-fashioned world that SEKO is dragging into the 21st century through digitization, but the benefits are huge.
With a digital supply chain, you make some fantastic changes for your customers, such as: freight optimization, a process aimed at enhancing efficiency and cost-effectiveness through route planning, load consolidation and mode selection; multimodal utilization, a way of seamlessly connecting various modes of shipment; and generally, the standardization of services.
ECOMMERCE
Our second pillar is ecommerce. Our ecommerce services encompass 3PL (third-party logistics) fulfilment services, domestic parcel movements, cross border parcels, and returns. SEKO have kept at the forefront of the digital world but here we’re focused on the physical, implementing robots, automation within the warehouse and continuing to push the technology forward. We’re using digitalization to increase efficiencies, drive costs down, through automated actions like wave picking, where we pick multiple orders in one cost-effective wave, which can massively increase efficiencies. We can align multiple platforms through API keys, which means our customers can access multiple vendors and enhance their sales.
WHITE GLOVE
Our third pillar is our white glove pillar, describing our bespoke services for niche requests that require a little extra thought. This pillar needs a thorough digital presence because compliance and integrity are hugely important when it comes to our white glove customers.
Generally, our white glove customers are moving pharmaceuticals, MedTec and high-tech goods so it’s important to maintain integrity of commodities, and we do this through control towers. We set up integrated logistics control towers around the globe that standardize services. We’ve recently introduced SEKO Live, which gives you a GPS timestamp video stream of each delivery, allowing customers to see exactly where your cargo is and when it’s delivering.
This has led to a 100% no false-call delivery record.
HOW OUR TECH BENEFITS OUR CLIENTS
A good case on the technological benefits that we’re bringing to our customers supply chains can be seen within our freight forwarding service for a multinational, family-owned client known for its building materials. SEKO’s bespoke freight management system for this client allows them to have full integration with carriers. It gives them full visibility of all POs throughout the supply chain and means that they’ve got a fantastic bespoke solution that we’ve now been able to roll out to multiple other clients.
Castore is another client that has greatly benefited from our innovative approach. We provide a comprehensive supply chain solution under a single tech stack, managing all aspects of their purchase order (PO) and sales order processes, and this efficiency has been instrumental in their recent success and growth.
Within the White Glove pillar, our collaboration with Peli BioThermal, a provider of temperature-controlled packaging and cold chain solutions to the global life sciences industry, ensures comprehensive visibility across their supply chain. This encompasses maintaining integrity, monitoring temperatures, tracking locations, ensuring accreditation availability in their chosen facility, and maintaining compliance throughout the entire supply chain.
WHY IS TECH IMPORTANT?
Adaptability and flexibility are important in the supply chain. As we approach more challenging market conditions in 2024, businesses will need to feel confident in having a robust and reliable supply chain. It’s important to work with suppliers that are recession proof. You need to be agile and adaptable, whether that be nearshoring, having a network that can help you break into new markets and then be able to scale, or maintaining the status quo.
Working with a logistics provider that can deliver all these things through a single tech stack is a real USP, and we hope you’ll reach out if you’re in need of our services.
If you'd like to learn more about SEKO can transform your supply chain, please reach out to a member of the team.
