15. Prioritizing Best Practices for Logistics Service Providers

Due to globalization and fast growing e-commerce businesses, the scale of Logistics Service Providers (LSPs) in India is expected to increase. LSPs support their client organizations to provide a smooth and timely delivery of goods. LSPs provide flexibility in their processes to meet the dynamic requirements of their customers. In this chapter, there is an attempt to identify the best practices followed by Indian LSPs and to rank the identified best practices. The best practices have been categorized into four major categories, that is strategic, operational, technical, and societal, based on literature review and opinion of experts. Further, twenty best practices were identified as subcategories under above-defined categories. The experts were asked to rate the 20 factors as per their importance. Further, to rank the best practices, a fuzzy AHP approach was applied. Based on priority weights, different categories were ranked in decreasing order as Operational (0.45), Strategic (0.41), Technical (0.10), and Societal (0.03). It has been observed from the study that the top 4 most important factors among all the 20 factors are safe delivery of shipments, use of eco-friendly fleet, reduction in carbon emission, and timely delivery. The study is likely to assist organizations in familiarizing with the strengths and practices used by Indian LSPs so that they can set up their perceptions and expect for their fulfillment. The research is also expected to help unorganized and budding LSPs to recognize their weak factors, which require further improvement and can excel to fulfill the dynamic market needs.