Recent Articles
How to Master Inventory Management During the Holiday Season
If poorly planned and handled, multichannel inventory management can get very ugly during high-volume order surges around holidays. Without question, the Number One holiday inventory mandate is: avoid stock outs. All of your resources and expertise must be focused on having the right items in the right mix at the right place to meet holiday demand. Poor omnichannel inventory management can create stock outs for one channel while other channels suffer overstocks. Inventory must be managed holistically across channels, from ecommerce shopping carts to call centers, from catalog orders to point of sale at brick and mortar stores. Forecast, Deploy, and Flex Forecast, Deploy, and Flex may sound like the name of a law firm, but in fact they are the three keys to winning the battle against inventory mismatches. First, generate an inventory plan that comes as close to actual demand as possible (understanding that, by definition, all forecasts are wrong, of course). Second, position the specific amount of inventory at warehouses, racks, bins, stores, and third party drop shippers for on-time fulfillment…and customer satisfaction. Finally, develop the flexibility
Don’t Let Shipping Fulfillment Workflow Mishaps Ruin the Holidays
Imagine shipping 6,000 orders in a single day. OK, we just said that to scare you, but one of our customers actually did just that...and lived to tell the tale. And as you might imagine, they're quite proud of it. Whatever your normal shipping volume is, here’s one thing you know for sure: it’s going way up during the holidays. Another thing we all know? Convoluted workflow is the greatest threat to meeting our commitments to customers and clients on time and at optimal cost during all-important peak business periods. Convoluted workflows do not scale, but your retail shipping workload is going to grow…and grow. According to Deloitte, "Sentiment and spending indicators are firing on all cylinders.” Deloitte’s annual forecast calls for holiday retail sales to rise a healthy 4-to-4.5 percent in 2017. Seasonally adjusted total holiday sales will hit $1.04 trillion between November and January. eCommerce sales are predicted to increase by 18 to 21 percent, reaching over $110 billion during the 2017 holiday season. Oh my, that’s a lot to ship. Every merchant, from brick-and-mortar retailers to mail
Monitor Your Shipping Accounts Automatically and Manage Holiday Shipping Costs!
The busiest shopping season of the year is fast approaching. While merchants are compiling their own shopping lists, they are also focused on the busiest shipping season of the year. Two of the biggest considerations are meeting consumer expectations and preventing shipping costs from eroding the bottom line. Servicing customers this time of year can be a challenge for today’s merchant. One of the main factors consumers consider when ordering online is whether or not shipping is free. According to the Walker Sands Future of Retail 2016 study, 9 out of 10 participants said free shipping was the number one incentive when asked what would make them shop online more often. Not only do consumers want free shipping, they want it fast, too! According to a survey conducted by Internet Retailer and Bizrate Insights, 47% of the consumers rated free shipping and fast shipping as equally important. Merchants are confronted with absorbing part or all of these shipping charges while expediting deliveries to satisfy their consumers. If all of this were not complex enough, they are faced with ever increasing
3 Ways to Drive Sales with Free Shipping
This online Holiday Shopping season is expected to break records and offers exciting challenges for eTailers to maximize order conversion and profits. Most businesses spend time and energy to drive traffic to their site, but what happens when customers get to the product page, do they add items to cart? What about when they get to checkout, how many of them complete the order? According to a study by UPS, free shipping is the #1 concern for customers when it comes to checking out. But for smaller businesses without deep pockets like Amazon, how can you offer customers free shipping without breaking the bank? Research tell us that 93% of people will take actions to qualify for free shipping The most frequently taken action to qualify for free shipping is adding items to a cart to meet shipping requirements. Here are three actions you can take to increase sales and capitalize on this trend by incentivizing shipping minimums in several ways: Increase your average order value Determine your minimum purchasing threshold by calculating your current average order value and setting
Keep Your Data Protected This Holiday Season
The holiday season is here and with it comes the rush to meet ever increasing demand. While you plan how best to maximize customer transactions it’s equally important to ensure that your infrastructure keeps pace from a security standpoint. We all remember the two big malware threats that caused such damage earlier this year, and surely there are more on the way. It’s important to think about how you are going to protect yourself from ever more sophisticated threats in the future. Every eCommerce business heavily relies on sensitive information such as credit card and transactional data. Keeping this data safe and secure is a key element in building trust with your customers t so they know their sensitive information is kept safe from hackers who may try to steal it. A recent article from TechRadar, provides you with some tips on how to successfully control, protect, backup and manage your data. We would also like to highlight some other, practical steps you can take to protect you and your customers: Enable automatic updates for your key desktop and application
Holiday Season Best Practices: Order Entry Essentials
***This content has been updated as of November, 2020*** Efficiently capturing and processing orders is the backbone of your holiday retail business. It’s no secret that the order entry processing capabilities you don’t have can hurt you. Here are some all-too-common gaps in order management systems that can sabotage your success this holiday season. Best Practices Department: Order Entry and Processing Division The influx of online orders during the holiday season can put maximum stress on any brand's ability to fulfill customer expectations. But even beyond digital sales, whether orders come via catalog sales, your website, your brick and mortar marketplace or through any other sales channel, you need to be ready to up your game. Research by BigCommerce and Statisa shows just how powerful the holiday shopping surge can be. eCommerce sales reached $3.5 trillion globally in 2019. And with the pandemic resulting in wild numbers of online orders over the first three quarters of the year, holiday online sales in 2020 are expected to exceed any and all previous years. If you're not selling online, you're missing a