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Is price really all that counts?

The latest survey carried out for Wincanton by the Pentor Institute for Opinion and Market Research shown that price is the major factor taken into account by companies in Poland when choosing their logistics operator.

    In the surrvey, carried out in April 2006, 90% of managers who took part in the survey pointed out the price as the most important factor for them with other important elements being punctuality and speed if service.

    Th erespondents - 500 managers in charge of logistics, transport or freight forwarding at their companies representing both trade and manufacturing sectors with annual sales exceeding PLN 10 million. While price, punctuality and speed of service scored top in the poll, other factors such as reliability, solidity, brand, range of services, flexibility and type of transportation appeared to be less important being mentioned by between only 5% and 12%.

    Tomasz Oczkowski, Wincanton Director for Logistics and Development for Central and Eastern Europe is reluctant to accept that price is the only important factor in choosing a logistics supplier. – “In tenders, of course price is very important, however, in view of the strong competition on the market, financial factors alone are not enough to attract a client. Delivering a high quality of service is also extremely important. Our clients are always very interested in the security and stability of operations.

Of key importance to them is the minimisation of business risk in changing their logistics provider. Winning a tender often depends on the company’s experience, its flexibility and speed in responding to market changes and also on the ability to change warehouse locations, IT solutions, and geographical location or the redesigning of the entire delivery chain in the shortest possible time.”

Katarzyna Kowalska, head of logistic operations at Leroy Merlin, says that, naturally, all these factors are important. However, when they recently chose Wincanton as their new supply chain service provider there were also other important elements taken into account – “Wincanton has a corporate culture that is similar to ours. What was important for us was creativity and commitment of the team and well-trained employees. This was a key factor in our decision to award Wincanton the contract.” – Katarzyna Kowalska explains.