An engagement with this practice is a decision process, not a tour of products. We start with the question you have to answer, agree the data that would make that answer honest, and stop when operations can run the result without us in the room. The four steps below are the same whether the file is a cost review, a 3PL contest, a warehouse node or a clearance process. The artefacts change. The sequence does not.
1. Scope the question
Most first emails describe a rate problem. Sometimes it is a rate problem. More often it is a network, a contract, a calendar or an inventory position that has been allowed to look like a rate problem. Scoping is the work of naming the decision. Are you trying to cut landed cost this year, appoint a 3PL, decide whether a second DC is justified, or stop paying storage on boxes that clear too late? Those are different files. Mixing them produces a workshop that everyone enjoyed and nobody can implement.
We will tell you, in writing, which file we think you have opened. If we think you have opened the wrong one, we will say so before invoices are collected. That is cheaper than a review of the wrong thing.
2. Diagnose the network
Diagnosis is unglamorous. It is twelve months of invoices, dispatch or receipt volumes, current contracts, exception codes, and a conversation with the people who actually book the freight. We separate line-haul from accessorials. We put detention days next to missed slots. We put DC appointment failures next to the ETA the broker was given. We do not accept a supplier dashboard as the only source. If the data sits only with the 3PL, that fact itself is a finding.
The diagnostic paper is a baseline you can defend. It is not a heat map. It is not a maturity score. It is a statement of what you pay, where it leaks, and which leaks are process rather than price. Process leaks do not go away when you change supplier. Price leaks sometimes do. Confusing the two is how companies retender every two years and keep the same storage bill.
3. Recommend the change
Options are ranked by saving, risk and implementation effort. You keep the commercial decision. We will not bury a preferred option in a hundred pages. We will say what we would do in your chair, what we would not do, and what we would wait on. If a tender is the right next step, the recommendation includes the demand pack, the scorecard and the shortlist logic. If staying with the incumbent is the right next step, we will write that too, with the contract changes that make staying defensible.
We do not sell implementation as a standing army. Handover is written so your operators, your procurement lead and your broker can run it. If you want us in the room for the first supplier meeting or the first month of a new SLA, that is a scoped extension, not an assumption.
4. Support the handover
Handover artefacts are boring on purpose: a baseline workbook, a one-page decision, a tender pack or SLA draft, a briefing note for the licensed broker, a transition list. Operations should be able to run the new design on a Monday morning without calling us to interpret a slide. If a document cannot be used without us, it is not finished.
What we need from you
Access to invoice files, volume extracts, current contracts and the people who live with exceptions. A named owner on your side who can say yes or no. A willingness to hear that the cheapest option on rent is not the cheapest option in the network. We do not need a steering committee of twelve. We do need one person who will read the paper.
Fees are scoped in writing before work starts. There is no success fee paid by a supplier. There is no warehouse tenancy hiding in the proposal. If that is not the engagement you want, this is not the practice.
Working sessions, not a tour
Most of the diagnostic work is files: invoices, volumes, contracts, exception codes. Working sessions are scheduled to test the reading with the people who book the freight and the people who live with missed slots. We do not need a glass meeting room. We need the person who knows why the appointment failed. If a warehouse walk is required, it is scoped as a day with a purpose: dock capacity, yard flow, whether brochure positions match the operation. It is not a tour for its own sake.
Handover is judged by whether operations can run Monday without calling us to interpret a slide. If a document cannot be used without us, it is not finished. If you want us in the first supplier meeting or the first month of a new SLA, that is a scoped extension. It is not an assumption hiding in the proposal. The sequence stays the same: name the decision, make the baseline honest, recommend the change, leave a file someone else can run.