Receiving times that never recover
A bad week happens. A bad quarter is structural. If inbound sits for a week routinely, your cash is stuck in a car park and no amount of coordination fixes their capacity.
Compare
We are not an alternative to your 3PL.
This one is a category confusion worth clearing up, because acting on it wrongly is expensive. A 3PL executes. We decide, and then hold the 3PL to the decision.
Brands often arrive asking whether we can replace their 3PL. We cannot, and you probably do not want us to. A 3PL owns a building, racking, labour and a WMS. That is a capital-intensive business and switching providers is one of the more disruptive things you can do to an operation.
What a 3PL does not do is decide what to buy, how much, when it should land, which node it should sit in, or whether last month’s invoice matched the rate card. Those are not their job and they will not do them for you. In most brands nobody does them, which is where the money leaks.
So the comparison is not A2Z or your 3PL. It is whether anyone is managing the layer above it.
Side by side
What each one actually covers.
| Dimension | Your 3PL | A2Z |
|---|---|---|
| Owns | The building, the racking, the pick and pack, the WMS. | The plan, the purchase orders, and the relationship with them. |
| Decides how much to buy | No. | Yes. Reorder points and buy plans per SKU. |
| Decides where stock sits | Within their own network only. | Across every node, including FBA and WFS. |
| Checks their own invoice | No, and it would be odd to expect it. | Line by line against the rate card. |
| Chases a late container | Only once it reaches their door. | From PO to receipt, with the recovery options priced. |
| Answerable for stockouts | No. | Yes. That is the job. |
Straight answer
When your 3PL is genuinely the problem
Sometimes the answer really is to move, and we will tell you so rather than manage a relationship that cannot be fixed. The signals:
Pick accuracy that stays broken
Errors happen at every warehouse. What matters is whether the rate improves after you raise it. If it does not move over two quarters, the process is not there.
They cannot support the channel you are growing into
Some 3PLs are excellent at DTC and poor at retail EDI, or fine domestically and unable to help internationally. That is a fit problem, not a performance problem.
The rate card keeps drifting
Accessorials that were never agreed, storage billed on a changed basis, minimums that appear quietly. Once corrected and it recurs, the relationship is not a partnership.
The other side
What changes when someone manages the layer above
The invoice gets read
Every line reconciled against the rate card and the activity that actually happened. Our published audit of one account recovered $6,047; another recovered CAD $356.86 in fulfillment errors across a Canadian warehouse.
Inbound is scheduled, not hoped for
Appointments booked, ASNs sent, receipts confirmed against what shipped. Short receipts get raised while the evidence still exists rather than at quarter end.
Performance has a number
Receiving time, dispatch adherence and pick accuracy tracked weekly against the contract. Conversations with your 3PL stop being about impressions.
Stock sits where demand is
If you run several warehouses, or a 3PL alongside FBA and WFS, inventory gets positioned deliberately instead of wherever it first landed.
Questions
The ones we always get asked.
- Do we have to change 3PL to work with you?
- No. We work with whoever you use. Most of the value comes from managing the relationship you already have rather than starting a new one.
- Will our 3PL resent being audited?
- Good ones do not. A warehouse that gets accurate forecasts, booked appointments and clean ASNs has an easier job. Disputes are raised with the working attached, which is a professional conversation rather than an accusation.
- What if we decide to move anyway?
- We run the move: shortlist, rate card comparison, transition plan and the inventory transfer, so it happens in a controlled window rather than across a peak.
- Do you take a cut of what you recover?
- No. Recovery work is part of the engagement, not a contingency arrangement. We would rather the incentive be a supply chain that runs properly than one that generates disputes.