Outsourcing is nothing more than transferring existing responsibilities, certain tasks, or services directly related to the parent company’s operations to an external firm. Increasingly, in the Polish logistics and distribution market, it can be observed that major retail participants are outsourcing the management of specialized distribution and logistics centers to external companies for the purpose of supplying retail outlets.
External companies comprehensively handle logistics and distribution services, starting from receiving goods, picking, maintaining all warehouse and administrative documentation, and ending with delivering the product with their own fleet to the final destination, which is the parent company’s store. Most often, logistics and distribution outsourcing is associated with specialized product categories, such as frozen or fresh items. It is very rare to encounter outsourcing services in logistics that are focused on items that do not require various types of specialized storage, picking, or transport conditions.
Large-format retail
After the collapse of the centrally planned economy, the streets filled with new, colorful shops. Retail trade was the first sector of the Polish economy to escape central control. After privatization, the result was surprising to those who remembered empty shops, insufficient supplies, and long queues. Today, hypermarkets offer a full range of goods at competitive prices, and shopping centers set the rhythm of leisure time. Along with the rapid development of retail trade in Poland, there has been an equally great development in all areas directly related to it. One such area is undoubtedly logistics, which has become an inseparable element of innovative solutions in Polish retail. The media reports on the opening of ever more new hypermarkets and distribution centers owned by large retail chains. They are becoming extremely innovative units, working to satisfy increasingly demanding customers.
Logistics in retail
In recent years, the way distribution and logistics are conducted in large retail chains and in retail itself has changed once again. New forms of logistics are intended to reduce the operating costs of large retail chains and prepare an even more competitive offer than before, aimed at the final customer. Every customer expects more and more from retail chains and often does not realize that all actions and the offer directly aimed at them are a 100% thought-out strategy conducted by major retailers, often using innovative tools invisible to the ordinary customer. Today, logistics is one of the basic tools used to satisfy human needs and to conduct competitive battles for the largest possible sales markets. On the other hand, if the goal of logistics is to ensure the appropriate properties (place, quantity, time, condition of goods, costs), it must be stated that its task is to properly serve the customer. It is a system that, by operating efficiently, contributes to satisfying needs and increasing customer satisfaction with the choice of a particular product or store. Innovative logistics consists of maximizing the availability of goods for customers while simultaneously reducing company costs.
This means that large retail chains operate their own distribution network, delivering to stores daily only those products that are needed on the shelf on a given day. The result of such actions is ensuring the availability of goods in sales outlets and minimizing inventory levels, which translates directly into a lack of frozen capital and the simplification of most internal store operations.
Outsourcing as innovation
Logistical innovation, introduced in the form of a comprehensive offer by outsourcing companies in Poland, has many faces; starting from creating the appearance of the facility and stands, to huge financial outlays incurred on specialized distribution centers, which, through their operation and advanced IT and hardware technology, show a different face of the functioning of Polish hypermarkets than before, and also completely change the product life cycle and previously accepted doctrines. With the huge financial outlays on conducting their own distribution activities incurred by major participants in the retail market, one cannot—at least for now—speak of keeping all logistics and distribution in the hands of one enterprise; until the moment when companies start making profits from their own logistics. When the huge outlays incurred begin to pay off. For now, however, external companies can benefit from the fact that logistics is developing and huge funds must be invested in conducting comprehensive logistics and distribution activities in all product categories. On the other hand, the centralization of logistics and distribution is associated with great benefits for the company conducting retail activities, through significant price discounts and a considerable reduction in the costs of all participants in the centralization. Therefore, companies that do not have sufficient finances for their own investments in the form of specialized logistics and distribution parks use the services of external companies, thus paying only for the service performed.