How to automate 3PL scorecarding and crush OTIF goals

If you’ve ever ordered multiple items from Amazon, there’s a good chance you’ve had to select a different delivery date for each item. It’s a simple interface, but each of those date selections kicks off intricate logistical chains, through the vast network of Amazon fulfillment centers, and across countless third-party sellers.

The same thing happens on different scales for all consumer brands, and that amount of data presents an immediate challenge: How can you tell if packages are arriving on time?

For smaller brands looking to get and keep loyal customers, this is a pressing question indeed. Every positive customer experience drives growth and loyalty, so getting orders to the right place, on time and in full (OTIF), is crucial.

Maintaining high OTIF performance is no easy feat. There are endless factors that can impact delivery, from internal inventory and production challenges to unreliable suppliers and 3PL issues. Even the most carefully planned operations can be derailed by sudden spikes in demand or other external disruptions.

To control as many of these uncontrollable variables as possible, leading brands are turning to automated scorecarding systems to closely monitor their 3PL partners' performance. By gathering comprehensive data and transforming it into actionable insights, these brands can identify issues early, drive continuous improvement, and deliver a seamless customer experience.

Cursed with supply chain blindness? See more clearly with Parabola.

Limited visibility hampers OTIF performance

One of the biggest barriers to measuring performance is getting adequate visibility into 3PL operations. "Every 3PL has their own WMS…I have yet to come across one that has robust reporting and visual reporting all in one package," explains one Parabola customer. An existing WMS might provide basic data, but many lack the visualization capabilities needed for effective performance tracking.

Additionally, data tends to be scattered across different reports, making it hard to get a complete picture of operations. Orders, inventory data, and track and trace workflows are stored in separate systems, often in different formats. It requires a significant amount of manual work to consolidate and reconcile disparate data types, so timely audits of OTIF benchmarks are nearly impossible.

Automated vendor scorecarding with Parabola

This is what Parabola is built for — pulling data from every dark corner of your tech stack, and compiling it in the light of day.

While manually sourcing disparate data and applying transforms in Excel might be feasible weekly or monthly, keeping daily tabs on OTIF performance is impossible to do by hand without scaling headcount. Parabola can automate that process multiple times hourly, if needed.

Here's how a vendor scorecarding Flow might work:

• Pull in order fulfillment, status, and shipping data from several endpoints in the vendor's API
• Sum up key metrics by channel by day/month/year (how many units were shipped to retailers, through the website, etc.)
• Compare to historical trends (i.e. same time last year) as well as budgeted benchmarks
• Push into a visualization that shows the aggregate data

By consolidating all the performance data into a single, centralized system, scorecarding provides a holistic, real-time view of 3PL operations. Users can easily switch between different time periods, channels, and other dimensions to uncover insights tailored to their needs - without the hassle of piecing together information from multiple reports.

Improved vendor oversight and performance

Implementing and automating a scorecarding system can deliver significant benefits for logistics operations. The classic adage says you can’t change what you don’t measure, and this holds true for vendor scorecarding and the 3PL relationship.

Measuring the same data points consistently means variance can be identified quickly, and root cause analysis performed more seamlessly. If there’s a sudden dip in on-time deliveries, for example, you can easily cut through the noisy data to find where a particular warehouse or pick session is to blame.

This is particularly useful at the busiest times of year. With comprehensive trend insights at your fingertips, ongoing scorecarding helps proactively identify risks and opportunities — and automating the process means logistics teams can focus on making data-driven decisions, rather than drowning in spreadsheets, or simply flying blind when orders are surging.

But perhaps the most important gift of vendor scorecarding is accountability. Poor visibility goes both ways, and if a brand can’t show its work by setting concrete performance indicators and goals for improvement, the relationship will suffer from a lack of trust.

For brands looking to improve their vendor oversight, this is the power of automated scorecarding: to transform murky data into the foundation of a dream logistics partnership.