Happy New Year!
We’re ringing in 2022 with some omnichannel fulfillment supply chain best practices that will make it super-easy to keep your New Year’s resolution!
We can’t help you fit into your old jeans, get that big promotion, go back and change the outcome of last Monday’s big game, or be nicer to your mother-in-law. But if your New Year’s resolution is to activate an omnichannel strategy that benefits your business dramatically in the areas of warehouse management and order management with dramatic results, this article’s for you.
Ode to the past
There was a time when your legacy WMS system or ERP served its purpose. But that time has passed.
Today,
- The consumer buying journey takes more turns. Those turns are coming faster.
- Demand and supply are unpredictable.
- Transportation and labor costs way too much to have staff running all over the warehouse, or on the phone, chasing down data that’s outdated or unreliable.
- Meanwhile, customers who are willing to spend more for a great omnichannel experience are spending more with those who can give it to them.
ERPs and legacy supply chain solutions that were developed via dial-up Internet can’t keep up with current demand – much less identify channels for new growth in 2022. But It’s Grow Time™!
Cheers to the future
Customer demand is here. Turning that demand into growth requires a whole new level of productivity, data visibility, speed, accuracy, flexibility and collaboration. These are the ingredients powering the fastest-growing ecommerce and DTC companies.
To grow or not to grow? These are the questions.
Has your business turned away sales or lost customers because it couldn’t execute customer orders quickly, accurately and affordably? If so, it’s time to take a critical look at your fulfillment supply chain and omnichannel strategy:
- How reliable is the data feeding crucial decisions on your DC or warehouse floor?
- Can your current process keep pace with the volume of orders rolling in today? What about in 1-3 years, when your competitors are using robotics?
- Does your ERP or legacy system make your staff’s jobs easier, or are they working weekends and still getting angry customer calls?
- Can managers quickly evaluate staff performance and make adjustments to reduce labor costs?
- Would you like to reduce costs like shipping and transportation to see immediate bottom-line profit growth?
- How comfortable are you with making customer promises and providing accurate play-by-play statuses for every order?
- Do you regularly analyze customer insights as part of your long-term growth plan?
- Are you excited about modern WMS and order management technology, but don’t have the resources for a long, custom IT project?
[If you are nodding to any of these, read on…]
It’s Grow Time™ with next-gen fulfillment
Deposco recently unveiled new branding under the tagline, “It’s Grow Time™. Our work with +3,000 of the fastest-growing companies has revealed that there are massive growth opportunities out there. You just need the right order management and fulfillment system to find/execute on them, faster and smarter.
These customers approached us with some of the same challenges you may be facing, such as:
- “What can we do to reduce transportation and labor costs?”
- “How can we take on more orders without hiring more people?”
- “Can we reduce costly pick-pack-ship errors?”
- “How can we get fulfillment times under 24 hours reliably?”
- “How can we improve inventory management in new channels or warehouse locations?”
- And more…
Fix fufillment issues and grow
We showed them how modern fulfillment supply chain applications can fix all of these problems and rapidly scale their operations. They wanted to take advantage of the dramatic growth being generated in digital channels recently. And they did…
Our customers’ total shipment growth increased by 78% in 2020 alone. These customers continue to report positive long-term results. Now it’s your turn.
How they did it: 3 supply chain best practices to steal
Throughout thousands of successful customer engagements, we’ve nailed down the top 3 supply chain best practices that make growth happen. (Feel free to steal):
- Consolidate your data into ONE SOLUTION. A single codebase, single database, and single platform – giving you speed, accuracy, total visibility and control.
- Choose a platform with ONE FOCUS… [You]. Get a fulfillment solution that can grow with you. It should be designed to fit the unique processes and objectives of your supply chain, not the needs of those who built it. Only a true SaaS platform with pre-built integrations offers the breadth, flexibility, and scalability to make this possible.
- Partner with someone who sees their company + you as ONE TEAM. A strategic advisor who brings the help you need, when you need it – not just answering your questions during rollout, but making sure you ask the right ones to hit your goals for many years to come.
Let’s break these 3 omnichannel strategy best practices down further with some real-world scenarios to consider:
One Solution: Because your data’s more useful when it’s all in one place.
Baseball bats are on backorder again … or are they really? Turns out you’ve got two dozen sitting on the lower shelf of Row G2. But your warehouse management system isn’t telling your order management system that. Or, if it is, you only find out after you’ve already clicked ‘reorder’.
And it’s not just baseball bats. You’ve got over 3,000 SKUs to manage – not to mention customer expectations. With all that inventory data scattered across spreadsheets and siloed solutions, you’re trying to make the best decisions you can. But how can you expect future growth when you can’t even get a clear picture of what’s going on now?
One supply chain solution that integrates WMS, order management, and fulfillment into a single codebase, single database, and single platform gives you total visibility and control in real-time:
- Maximize operational efficiency – no integration glitches, no data lag, one unified view of all your operations, all dashboarded in real-time
- Manage your inventory with 100% visibility at any given moment – from dock to stock, pick to ship – with cycle and physical counting, tracking, replenishment, receipt management, barcoding, labeling, cross-docking, returns and more
- Stay on top of everything with automated notifications and alerts – for a range of key items like accurate inventory levels, sales generated, and financial recording
- Get actionable intelligence with easy-to-understand charts that let you assess performance data and monitor KPIs – helping you make the best decisions in real time, maximize labor investments, and continuously improve
- Zoom in on specific business needs with real-time reports that let you easily track individual SKUs or channels
- Gauge your performance over time by setting benchmarks and capturing any number of key data points in real-time
One Focus: Because your solution has to be about your specific needs. Not just the generic needs of companies like yours.
Great news – you grew 100% last year. The bad news? You’re not sure how your current supply chain solution can keep up with that pace. It already requires a lot of manual labor to keep all this working. The last demand spike nearly crashed the whole thing.
And as for adding those marketplace integrations outside of the 5 currently offered, or that B2B channel, the flexibility just isn’t there. So sure, you could come up with yet another workaround. But can it work well enough to support this year’s growth (and beyond)?
With one focus, it will. One focus means having a true SaaS platform specifically configured to meet your unique objectives – with the breadth, flexibility, and scalability that actually make this possible:
- Connect your current systems and bring all data into a single, real-time view with a library of over 100 pre-built software integrations
- Get enterprise-grade inventory management capabilities regardless of your company’s size or infrastructure, providing the flexible tools you need to scale up
- Fulfill orders strategically according to your current needs and business model, using waved or waveless strategies based on priority or order size, best practice picking strategies, optimized labeling and palletization, and much more
- Get average fulfillment times below 24 hours at 99%+ accuracy with a system that integrates directly with parcel and local carriers, calculates dimensions, shops rates, generates labels, connects to billing, and provides documentation and tracking for you and your customers
- Always be prepared for demand spikes – peak seasons, promotions, product launches – with total end-to-end control, monitoring, and company-wide visibility
- Get help from a partner who will focus on your needs, develop tailored strategies, and continuously adapt and improve processes as you evolve and grow
One Team: Because growing isn’t putting out fires. It’s putting heads together.
You can’t keep up with current growth. Yet, you also know that you could – and should – be growing a lot more. Who is actively guiding you on your next big opportunity, like that new D2C channel? Now is your grow time.
With compound growth and bottomless sales opportunities in digital channels, there’s no time for putting out fires and apologizing to customers. Now is the time to look ahead and pounce.
Look for a partner who’s equally vested in your strategic path to omnichannel. A teammate with the drive and skill set to sit down at your side to continually improve the customer experience – no matter how orders are sourced, placed, or fulfilled. An active advisor in preparing your business for smooth enterprise integration with minimal disruption to IT and staff. One that coaches you. Challenges you. Enables you to grow.
One team means giving you the help you need when you need it – someone who will not only answer your questions but make sure you’re asking the right ones:
- Alleviate operational growing pains – a good partner makes your growing pains their growing pains, taking the burden off your shoulders, so you can attack growth
- Identify the most meaningful dashboards and analytics for your business – not just for the sake of having pretty charts, but zeroing in on the ones most relevant to hitting your goals
- Tap into personalized service as lifetime collaborators, NOT a “one-and-done” vendor or passive Help Desk – a source of ongoing calls to monitor results, bounce ideas off each other, and proactively drive success
- Improve operational processes over time – supply chain analytics to make tweaks, measure, adapt and improve, every step of the way
- Make the system work for you – rather than backing you into a cookie-cutter process, showing you how to create rules and processes that let you grow the way you need to grow
Now you know. You’re good to grow.
At Deposco, we talk with entrepreneurs and supply chain professionals all day, every day. They’re in all different ecommerce and DTC businesses, but the one thing that they have in common is this: a business.
They’ve grown it. Maybe even from scratch. Which is great. But it leaves them working extremely hard just to hold it all together and keep growing.
We help these companies eliminate paper-based processes that tie their teams in knots and keep them from fulfilling orders fast enough to meet growing demand.
We’ve freed businesses from legacy systems that do not share data or talk to each other. These systems were designed for B2B supply chains and no longer fit current B2C models.
One Solution, One Focus, One Team is having the tools to know exactly where your current inventory is, how much of it you have, and where your new market opportunities are.
It’s being able to take advantage of shifting consumer demand. And escape all the growing pains your business faces every day. Because really, it’s too much for anyone to carry. And we don’t think you should have to.
Fulfillment supply chain applications
We looked at all this and said what if you had a completely different kind of omnichannel fulfillment supply chain platform built around these 3 critical factors?
#ONE SOLUTION
#ONE FOCUS
#ONE TEAM
This would give you more to stand on. And make it easier to manage your business when It’s Grow Time™. That’s what Deposco is all about. And it’s why we’re seeing numbers like these:
- +3,000 of the world’s fastest-growing ecommerce and DTC businesses rely on Deposco – see all Deposco success stories and videos in action
- Over $10 billion in sales and over 43 million consumer orders supported annually
- Total shipment growth increased by 78% in 2020 alone