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This article was first published at IT Business.

Last update 1 year ago by Patrick Ruppelt

The discussion about freight costs is not new. Interestingly, the districts are dividing into two camps. I would like to say that there are two fundamentally different fronts, which nevertheless supports my conviction of the division in terms of professionalism.

Not only in the IT sector, but in all areas of economic activity, there are distribution channels that function permanently because they are economically reliable, stable and "dependable", and others that claim to be so but are unable to assert themselves.

Recently, a distributor announced the urgent need to raise shipping and freight costs. As I, responsible for purchasing in my current company as well as formerly working in Franconia for a retailer with exactly this distri, had already had the discussion many times that two units of an order should not be sent with two freight charges, this meant the quasi-termination of the cooperation for us. After several explicit enquiries, the distributor could not be convinced that there are other companies that are quite capable of dealing competently with the issue.

Example two, different supplier: Each consignment is calculated as a lump sum with one-off freight costs that are even cheaper than those from example one individually. The cooperation with this distri leaves nothing to be desired - everything works in perfect order, and has done so for years. Interestingly, this is also the only distributor where there are no deficiencies all around. Just think about the RMA processing - with this distributor we currently have an RMA share of approx. 5% of our total RMA despite a purchase volume of >50% - an interesting fact by the way.

Through skilful logistics and process organisation, it is therefore very much possible for distributors to score points and maintain and expand operations despite immense price pressure without charging excessive freight costs.

In order to clearly answer the question about the problem of "transferring to the end customer", I can only say that with the professionalism shown by a few districts, this issue does not arise at all.

How districts negotiate their contracts with delivery services in a meaningful way, how districts get a functional grip on their logistics, how districts should organise their distribution channels - all these are questions that not the retailer and certainly not the end customer has to deal with. In my perhaps somewhat overly provocative view, any distri that disagrees is acting neither professionally nor economically correctly and will not be successful in the long run.

As is so often the case, the IT industry seems to me to lag behind global economic practice in these views as well. Basic economic understanding is apparently a foreign word here - perhaps on both the distri and the trader side.

Addressed to all buyers, I would like to make the following liberal remark: Instead of getting upset, we are the ones who have to send the signal to the distribution. Take action, there are plenty of professional alternatives. However, retailers who visit portals such as Preissuchmaschine.de, guenstiger.de and the like every day to make purchases and penny-pinchingly compare the daily prices of 30 suppliers are not acting any better than the distributors addressed in Ms Böckle's question. Traders who act in this way should rather join a buying syndicate, as this saves time, costs and nerves.