09/15/2026
Peak Season: Managing Relationships & Reviewing Performance
You've managed to get everything in place, from understanding your product offerings to initiating and managing peak season with your 3PL. The final step is to get some review and control processes in place to keep an eye on everything.
Key takeaways
- You've gone through a lot of effort to build strong communications, information sharing, and relationships inside and outside your business, and you'll need to continue putting some effort in to keep everything running smoothly.
- You should make a KPI and metrics review part of your regular activities to effectively manage your 3PL.
- Regular review ensures your 3PL is meeting all of your baselines and thresholds, and also helps you identify ways to improve.
- The lessons learned and problems solved during peak season can feed back into continual improvement activities to maximize business outcomes and customer satisfaction.
- You can use all of these strategies, activities, learnings, and lessons to create a robust, repeatable, end-to-end process throughout this peak season and many more to come.
This is the last of four articles on planning and navigating peak season with your third-party logistics provider. Part 1 covered establishing what you will sell, where, and to whom. Part 2 covered demand profiles, inventory levels, and reordering. Part 3 covered running the operation itself. This article covers the review and control processes that keep it running.
Maintain and control relationships, communications, and activities
You've managed to get everything in place, from understanding your product offerings to initiating and managing peak season with your 3PL. The final step is to get some review and control processes in place to keep an eye on everything and ensure peak season continues to run smoothly. You can achieve this by:
- Maintaining good relationships and open lines of communication.
- Reviewing performance and tweaking as necessary.
- Driving and supporting continual improvement activities with your 3PL.
Repeating the cycle during this peak season and others to come.
1. Maintain good relationships and open lines of communication
You've gone through a lot of effort to build strong communications, information sharing, and relationships inside and outside your business. You'll need to continue putting some effort in to keep everything running smoothly.
Maintain good relationships and open lines of communication.
When to do this: during peak season.
What to consider
- Continue to check in with internal business teams and external providers to stay aware of any activities or changes that will impact the peak season.
- Periodically audit the flow of information and communications to ensure nothing is being missed.
- Ensure you and your team are proactive in keeping two-way communication channels open.
If there are any failures of communication or information sharing, identify and resolve the root causes.
Working with your 3PL
- Pass any relevant information onto your 3PL as soon as you've received and validated it.
- Give your 3PL as much notice as possible of any anticipated changes to demand, products, processes, or other parts of the supply chain.
- Hold regular meetings with your points of contact within your 3PL provider.
2. Review 3PL performance and make any necessary changes
You should make a KPI and metrics review part of your regular activities to effectively manage your 3PL. This will ensure they're meeting all of your baselines and thresholds, and also helps you identify ways to improve. The critical success factors you set in Part 3 are what you measure against here.
Review 3PL performance and make any necessary changes.
When to do this: during peak season.
What to consider
- Review all reporting and information from your 3PL and supply chain providers on a regular basis.
- Check that baselines, thresholds, and alarm levels remain consistent with your business goals and customer metrics.
- Double-check and audit the information you're receiving to ensure quality and accuracy.
Analyze information to identify early warning signs or opportunities for improvement.
Working with your 3PL
- Ensure ongoing, high-quality, robust, and timely information sharing with your 3PL and supply chain providers.
- Regularly review your business's most important KPIs and metrics for meeting business goals and customer requirements.
- Work with your 3PL to incorporate any changes into the reporting platform.
- Identify and analyze trends and other data patterns to understand where you can make improvements.
- Work with your 3PL to develop solutions to improve the processes that drive these metrics.
Talk to GEODIS about how we can support your peak season. Get in touch with GEODIS.
3. Drive and support continual improvement activities with your 3PL
The lessons learned and problems solved during peak season can feed back into continual improvement activities to maximize business outcomes and customer satisfaction.
Drive and support continual improvement activities with your 3PL.
When to do this: during peak season.
What to consider
- Use the information and reporting you've captured to inform continual improvement activities.
Review your strategic and tactical plans to understand appetite, resources, and priorities for 3PL improvement activities.
Working with your 3PL
- Review improvement activities with your 3PL to identify the most urgent and impactful changes they can make.
- Create joint initiatives for new programs and projects of work and continual, process improvement activities.
- Manage continual improvement activities and measure their impact on business outcomes, customer satisfaction, and other metrics.
- Repeat this cycle for a continual improvement approach.
4. Repeat the cycle during this peak season and others to come
Finally, you can use all of these strategies, activities, learnings, and lessons to create a robust, repeatable, end-to-end process throughout this peak season and many more to come.
- For each new peak season, we recommend running through all of the areas, processes, and steps that we've listed in this series, starting with establishing your product offerings and requirements.
During your current season, we recommend repeating these steps:
- Manage operational activities of peak season logistics with your 3PL.
- Maintain good relationships and open lines of communication.
- Review 3PL performance and make any necessary changes.
Drive and support continual improvement activities with your 3PL.
Although the peak season is different for everyone, these practices give you a repeatable starting point for getting the most out of your 3PL.