Imagine having access to the latest innovations, technology and practices the transportation industry can provide. Knowing that regardless of the time of day or day of the week, transportations experts were at work ensuring your products arrive at their destination in the most efficient, cost effective manner possible.

Now imagine that you can access this ideal transportation management solution without having to manage the investment in labour, technology or overhead? That's the Ideal Transportation Department at Lakeside.

Companies with insourced transportation departments generally look at the role of transportation as transactional. The typical insourced department executes basic budgeting tasks, some route design and planning, but mostly tactical functions. They are reactive and they provide very little in the way of metrics or analysis to help inform strategic business decisions. Due to their reactive nature, they also offer low visibility into real-time transportation concerns and provide even less control.

A SmartSourced solution to your transportation needs, Lakeside's Ideal Transportation Department functions as a virtual extension of your internal team and delivers best in class transportation solutions to meet your needs.

How does the Ideal Transportation Department work?
In order to appreciate the function and value of the "ideal transportation department", it's important to understand the roles and processes of your typical 'insourced' transportation management model. Transportation departments have 3 tactical roles (Compliance, Process and Operations) and 3 strategic roles (Information, Design and Procurement). In an effort to maintain the status quo, a typical department executes the bare minimum from a tactical perspective and even less of the strategic roles. They do some budgeting, plan the routes, select the mode and carrier and then functionally manage the compliance, process and operations of this plan.

Lakeside's Ideal Transportation Department adds 16 strategic functions and 16 tactical business processes to a typical transportation structure, which includes (to name a few):

• Network Optimization
• Activity Costing
• Business Analytics
• Benchmarking
• Trends Analysis
• Consolidated Process Design

By adding these strategic processes, you not only achieve the most optimized and efficient transportation function, your transportation department will provide valuable and insightful information to other business units. Imagine your Transportation Data System providing real time, accurate costing information to your finance department, mode options analysis to operations and/or accurate customer information to your sales department. By executing these functions, your transportation department turns from a cost-centre into a profit-centre.

The net effect of the Ideal Transportation Department is an optimized transportation system that finds cost efficiencies, transfers risk, increases visibility, enhances controls and inspires innovation throughout the entire company.

Is SmartSourcing transportation the right fit for your organization? Our opportunities assessment is our first chance to learn about your business and identify how we can help you achieve your goals. We can help you determine where the opportunities are to optimize your transportation management function, provide key business metrics and drive costs and miles out of the system.