How to Maximize the Use of Your Freight Forwarder

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You are running an import business and bringing containers from the other side of the world. The places you only see on business trips, for a few days, a week or two at most. In today’s world it is almost impossible to survive with local sources. With cultural differences, political and economical situation of the country of origin and communication barriers might become obstacles when importing.

In today’s world everyone must make a difference in their industry in order to survive and prosper in the long term. With this much existing competition, importing goods alone might be a challenge itself which may overshadow the core of your business. Luckily there are service companies that will help you overcome these potential challenges of importing. In this blog, some of my colleagues have already written about the advantages of working with a freight forwarder and choosing between hundreds of companies. Being in a very competitive environment, freight forwarders are now going beyond just moving your goods from point A to point B.

In this article, I will give you some points on how you can maximize the benefits of using a freight forwarder. You might be using a freight forwarder for a long time but with these steps you can easily increase the advantages at no additional cost. If you have this opportunity why not take it?

1. Supplier visits:

This will increase the relationship between your supplier and the freight forwarder locally. Understanding the needs of one another will increase the efficiency and delivery of the goods. Your supplier will list what they expect from the forwarder locally, what types of services they will need and in return the local freight forwarder will explain what the supplier needs to do to load out the goods on time, what types of cut offs they must meet. They can act as your advocate in the origin country and discuss the issues or the concerns that you might have discussed with the suppliers one more time. This might save you from frequent trips overseas.

2. Production updates:

Although they will have no power to push the suppliers for production, freight forwarders can act as a liaison office between the suppliers and the importers. As an importer, the more information you provide to freight forwarder better it is for them to understand the importance and the urgency of the goods. They can contact the suppliers periodically asking the status of the goods and in return you will get reports. If the supplier is not responsive to your emails or requests fast enough asking your forwarders help will definitely have some impact on the process. Purchase order management, and follow up by your forwarder can take the workload from your shoulders.

3. Market information:

With constant change, is it hard to keep track of what’s going on in the markets that you are importing from? You read, do internet searches but still there is no match as the local, fresh and fast market information that the freight forwarders can provide. Having coverage in origin countries, your forwarder should be able to provide you with local market information whenever you need. Information flow from all over the world, your forwarder can be an easy point of access to the information and details that you might miss.

There are many more items I could list however above are the 3 of the most critical ones in my opinion. If you ask your freight forwarder about any of these above questions, and get a negative response you should know that these are (some of) the types of services you could and should get from the industry. To accomplish this, building s strong relationship and trusting your service provider is very important.

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Serkan Kavas
Serkan Kavas was born and raised in Turkey. He graduated from Dokuz Eylul University with a Degree in Business Administration in 2001. He had an internship in Germany at a major industrial company after college. He worked at their family business in Turkey and managed their exports from Turkey to Europe. He moved to the U.S. to continue his education in New York and obtained his MBA degree with International Business concentration at New York Institute of Technology in 2005. After graduation he was recruited by MTS Logistics and he has been working at the company since 2005. Serkan worked his way up from the entry level to operations manager and to his current position as our VP of Imports at MTS Logistics. He wears different hats daily with different responsibilities. He has vast knowledge, experience, and understanding of all aspects of logistics, freight, and the supply chain. His focus now is to help develop our import department and help our company move forward.

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