Any business which involves a physical product requires logistics of one sort or another to carry on their business. Whether it's operating a small warehouse or stockroom to store, pick and pack your customer orders or arranging delivery of your products to customers, even the smallest businesses require logistics.

Logistics includes all the processes required to go from raw materials to end customer delivery, including purchasing, inventory management, warehousing, shipping and even customer returns.

Logistics Options for Small Businesses Unlike larger organizations, small businesses don't have huge budgets for logistics and many people available to carry out these tasks. What options and methods can these companies employ to ensure logistics are carried out effectively?

Do It Yourself: Learn about logistics to be able to do it yourself, or hire staff who can do it for you.

Outsource: The size and amount of logistics activity you have will determine what type of third party arrangement you require. If you've got less than 500 cartons to ship each month, you're probably looking at packing them yourself, or with appropriate assistance, and then shipping them direct by courier or through a local courier center.

This of course assumes you have the space to carry out the packing operation and stage the cartons for shipping. If you don't, many courier centers have appropriate facilities, equipment and packing materials to assist.

Higher-Volume Small Businesses For higher-volume small businesses, you may be able to find smaller boutique logistics companies that are willing to handle your business on a third party logistics basis. In such cases you can simply pay your operating cost based on a number of arrangement types. Probably the easiest and most straight forward for small businesses is a cost per piece. This method makes it simple to complete your business plan, and you don't have to commit to big leases, expensive systems or the direct hiring of staff.