Hello, We are trying to start logistics business which will ship products of our customers to our country. It is useful services especially for Asian countries where Amazon etc. not ships directly. So we have (plan to have) warehouse on Europe, USA and customer products would be forwarded into our country through these warehouses. This business is called as shipping forwarder business as much as I know. I need to know which type of Software/applications should I look for for this business (PHP/SQL based preferred) and where I can get more details about internal procedures etc. Thanks for attention. Regards, Turkel.
It would seem to me since it appears that you are selling products that you would be better off to use existing networks of freight forwarders to import your products rather than trying to build your own network.
I don`t have products and I don`t sell products. Customer purchases from amazon and provides delivery address of my warehouse. Warehouse receives products and then forwards to our country.
In that case, you still might want to use existing freight forwarders unless your volume is large enough for you to fill containers. Even then it might be easier to use freight forwarders to handle the containers.
If understand what it is that you want to do is to expedite other parties' shipments between each other and your specialty will be global shipping. You will need not only warehousing and trucking but also Customs personnel for each location that you will cover. I market to logistics companies, but am not a logistics expert, by any means. That said, you at least need to be looking at warehouse inventory and tracking software, supply chain management software, customer service software, and more. I assume that you will start with a small number of supported delivery points?
My point is already to become freight forwarder and compete with other f. forwarders. Yes it will cover several countries, I am not yet sure about customs, I hope 2 employees for each country is enough for start. Regarding to software, I agree I need freight forwarding software but which one actually may cover my expections. I need php based becouse I need to integrate it into php based web applications.