Seeing Things Through - How Avalon CSC Differentiates Itself in the Consultancy Space
We spoke with Avalon CSC about their differentiators and what sets them apart as a supply chain consultancy
When a company representative says, “We’re proud of everything we do”, you know they’re doing something right. We recently sat down with Nick Reonegro, an Operations and Supply Chain Executive at Avalon CSC, and in addition to expressing pride in the company’s track record, he filled us in on their background and current offering.
According to Nick, Avalon was started after the founders identified an opportunity in the market that was being overlooked by larger players in the logistics space.
“As you know, the large Fortune 500 companies are very well taken care of by what we call the ‘Big Four’, KPMG, Deloitte and the like. But where we found an opportunity was in the mid-market, smaller companies in or around the 200 million to 2 or 3 billion range. We found they weren’t being very well taken care of by the larger players. Why not? Their bandwidth is limited to large clients and large projects. So that’s how Avalon came to be, to serve those mid-market clients.”
Today, Avalon offers those companies a suite of logistics services that cover everything from dry and frozen products to pharmaceuticals, tires, oils and lubricants, even alcohols, wines and beverages. Nick explains that while the company started out with a focus on warehousing all the above, they’ve evolved to offer inventory management and manufacturing capabilities for their clients.
Warehousing: the sweet spot
“Avalon’s sweet spot from the beginning has always been in the warehouse. From warehouse process to design, to the software used to run warehouse management systems, we cover it all. We have a lot of clients that are 3PL providers, so we closed the loop for them in terms of warehousing, to shipping their goods to clients.”
In addition to helping manage their warehouses, Nick explains that by closing the loop, Avalon’s approach can help streamline costs by making it easy to optimize loads and routes. “We’re always finding opportunities for our clients to reduce the costs of transporting their goods,” he said.
Inventory management
From warehousing, the company’s expansion into inventory management is also paying dividends for their clients.
“When the company expanded into inventory management, we began to cover everything that has to do on the supply chain planning side,” says Nick. “That includes anything from demand planning, to supply planning, procurement, inventory management, and dealing with obsolescence, intermittent demand, and forecasting models. It’s an expertise we’ve built into our offering.”
Manufacturing: the future
The company is also making headway in the manufacturing space. Nick explains:
“Manufacturing is something new for us. The same thing we do on the warehouse floor, we’re now going to apply to the factory floor. While the processes may not be exactly the same, and manufacturing is more of an industrial engineering production, there are many similarities, and we’re starting to see some success.”
A well-rounded offering
To say the company’s offering is well-rounded is an understatement. In fact, in addition to all the above, Nick shared a recent win for the company—the design of a purpose-build facility for examining marine containers. As part of that process, Avalon provided a major Canadian port with a number of options and designs for the facility, each with varying levels of automation.
“We provided them with three options,” Nick explained. “They ranged from option A, with minimal automation, to option C with more expansive levels of automation, with option B falling somewhere in between.
We completed an analysis on the investment required, the labour that would be needed to run the facility and built out the options with an accompanying facilities layout. We also did the research and gave them an idea of what’s out there in the market, in terms of automation equipment.”
A company that’s there, every step of the way
At the end of the day, Nick said, what really sets Avalon’s offering apart from the ‘Big Four’ is the fact that not only will they come in and tell their clients what they need to do, they’ll stick around to help them do it.
“I think that's one our major differentiating factors. The big players have a lot of theoretical knowledge, and a lot of great people that can produce reports and do the layouts. What they don't necessarily have are people that are going to be on the ground with the client, seeing the plans through, and making it work alongside them. We do.”
As we mentioned off the top, Avalon is clearly doing something right.