The most critical period in the establishment of a new relationship with your 3PL warehouse team lies in the 60 days before and the 90 days after the move and start up of 3PL warehouse operations. It’s during this period that CFW’s ability to execute and deliver on our commitments is most important.  To ensure the successful execution of our solutions, CFW has built a core competency around transitioning and integrating a customer’s business into the outsourcing model. We have a team of logistics professionals whose sole responsibility is to manage and coordinate all aspects of the move, transition and integration of new businesses into the CFW network.

The team’s skills include project management, systems integration, facility / warehouse construction, process design, and operational and administrative training.  This group is not a “S.W.A.T. Team” that comes in for a brief transition phase before moving on to another assignment. In CFW’s model, dedicated team members continue to work with customers beyond the initial transition to assure that we successfully integrate ourselves with our customer’s organization and sustain operational excellence.

Team members become advocates for the customer within CFW and help in building the climate of high trust and open communication that is essential to building mutually beneficial, long-term relationships.  Team members remain part of the on-going customer relationship and are able to leverage their in-depth customer knowledge gained. Their post-implementation participation involves ongoing design supply chain enhancements and assisting with further integrating CFW into the customer’s organization.  CFW’s approach to transition management is built on its proven methodology and success in managing previous transitions.

In a nutshell, there are four keys to a seamless move and integration:

• Understanding the customer’s short- and long-term business requirements.

We bring knowledge of the customer base and geographic requirements, growth plans, requirements for value-added services and other business factors that may impact logistics & supply chain planning.

• Establish open lines of communication within the organizations.

That means communicating the business reasons and the benefits for the change at all levels within the customer’s organization. It’s important to build an environment of high trust where business issues can be openly discussed and resolved.

• Develop a detailed transition plan.

Include milestones, timelines and resource requirements that are realistic and in line with the customer’s business needs.  Our boilerplate transition plan covers 80% of most move plans with another 20% added or refined to customize the transition to meet your specific business and operational nuances.

• Focus on people.

Human resource management is one of the key factors in every transition.  Prior to and during the transition, “over-communication” is critical. Throughout the transition, staff should be informed of progress and how the change will impact them.  When transitioning your existing employees to CFW, it is important to highlight to them that they are being transitioned to a company that has the same core competencies as they do and thus provides many opportunities for upward mobility.  We have members of our management team who started out as transitioned customer employees and have grown and thrived through logistics opportunities that were not available in their previous environment.

To learn more about our 3PL warehouse transition management approach please click here or fill out our contact form to the left.