It wouldn’t be retail without fulfillment chaos in Peak Shipping Season. Industry Dive’s newest annual report shows you can expect more of it:
77% of supply chain leaders say this peak retail season will be more challenging this year. Do you feel the same? Grab these exclusive Peak Season Planning tools — Access expert advice, examples, and resources to OWN your Peak.
Retailers still struggle with an age-old dilemma
“Do I give customers what they want (at all costs)? Or do I focus on profitability?”
Traditionally, this was a trade-off. You could either satisfy Customer Experience (CX) or you could crush your financial results. Not both. Over the years, we’ve accumulated many customer stories proving this is no longer the case.
Crushing your Peak Shipping Season requires these 3 key ingredients:
- Anticipating customers’ needs
- Aligning your fulfillment operations for “no-BS” peak execution
- Trusting your platform partner
Anticipate what customers want for Peak 2024
There’s a costly difference between keeping your customers happy and anticipating their needs. A business that just keeps customers happy will market on many channels without having a good way to understand the trade-offs of deals, promotions, and new products. They spend more on rush shipping to make up for mistakes or to satisfy flash-offer demand spikes. They blame suppliers for stockouts. And when there’s a delay, they throw shipping partners under the bus.
A business that anticipates customers’ needs will have technology in place to ensure those problems never happen in the first place.
- They use system-directed insights and tools to forecast Peak buying trends accurately.
- They turn on integrations to market new products in the right places – whether on Amazon or someplace new – without stockouts.
- They bring on new staff quickly as volumes ebb and flow.
- And they’re rate shopping hundreds of shipping options to ensure on-time delivery at reduced costs – passing along those savings to their customers.
Investing in technology like a WMS and order management system with distributed order management (DOM systems) features gives you full control over fulfillment. They help retailers proactively identify what consumers will want during Peak Shipping Season, where they’ll want it, and how they’ll want to get it.
These systems provide a great tool to leverage pre-season events as a market barometer. Learn more: More Prime Days Are More Opportunities for Retail.
Do you have what you need to proactively handle volume surges without risk to CX or profitability?
Align your peak fulfillment operations
In legacy systems like ERP or WMS bolt-ons, every Peak Shipping Season is a fire-fighting sprint. Likely, you’ve hired expensive consultants to fix the ‘ship show’ last year turned out to be – and getting right back in the same boat every year because of these systems that can’t handle the volume or pace of change.
The financial impact of NOT having a modern system to align your execution strategy to customer needs is getting bigger. Accountability is paramount:
- 32% of consumers are more likely to blame the retailer for a failed delivery
- 95% expect the business to contact them if an estimated delivery date changes in transit
- 90% expect some form of action or compensation for missed promise-by dates
- And 41% want to be notified immediately when a delivery exception occurs
Once you’ve moved into proactive planning with your Peak Season fulfillment systems, there’s so much more you can do to keep improving.
Modern warehouse management software and OMS software position your business to manage Peak Shipping Season as a marathon leading to YOY growth. With predictability, flexibility, scalability, and alignment, you can respond to volume surges and demands all year long – not just during Peak.
These technologies keep your finger on the pulse of all financial variables, providing certainty and preparation for the things you can’t control – such as the latest customer preferences, transportation costs, labor shortages, and supply disruptions.
OMS and WMS systems use native features designed to bring ultimate balance and control over both CX and the bottom line.
- System-directed decision-making based on 100% inventory visibility – owned and accessible
- Real-time visibility and tracking regardless of where orders are placed or fulfilled
- Automation to reduce decision points enabling faster, error-free peak season fulfillment
- Demand forecasting intelligence puts the right products in the right places
- Intelligent order routing reduces transfers, stockouts, and carrying costs
- Rate shopping identifies the best shipping options for each order
Trust your platform – any season, any challenge
Are your legacy fulfillment systems too reactive to the evolving needs of Peak Shipping Season? Does your platform partner actively help you improve CX without costly surprises or constantly outgrown technology?
In our experience, most don’t. It’s always out-of-scope fees here; new upgrades and solutions there. These are often acquired and externally supported (usually very loosely).
Look at our competitors’ reviews:
- “We have spent hours trying to get support to look into it but no clear help at all. Just been going around in circles. We have given them multiple contact numbers to reach us and they only gave excuses [that] the number isn’t reachable.” – TrustPilot
- “Good luck trying to get your CSM on the phone, we have to schedule meetings with the guy weeks in advance.” G2
Maybe you’re thinking, that sounds a lot like my current provider… Time to ask the hard questions and make a change.
Then look at the Deposco reviews
On the flip side, here’s what our customers say: Gartner Peer Reviews on Deposco. It’s customer reviews like these that led to our recent inclusion as a Niche Player in the Gartner Magic Quadrant, WMS category – the first pure-play SaaS WMS provider to be added in 10 years. View all our accolades and awards.
No one understands Peak fulfillment like we do
At Deposco, we know Peak Shipping Season comes in many forms, and we’ve seen them all. We’ve been tracking Peak trends for several years. We know Peak is changing and must be managed differently.
Many companies get busy near the end of the year. Some in the beginning or the middle. Trends are extending the surges of Peak to several times a year or more with high-volume events that are outside of the norm.
In addition, inflation is causing many consumers to reign in spending or search for deals more frequently in the off-months. Longer and more frequent Peak retail seasons mean your partner must keep you on your game in tackling fulfillment challenges.
What’s challenging your Peak Shipping Season?
Are you looking to pull out of Amazon due to their high fees? Do obstacles such as Amazon FBA’s new storage capacity limits have you looking for ways to right-size inventory or be more agile in how/where you fulfill demand to improve your sell-through rates?
Is system reliability a concern? Or the inability to bring on technology that could reduce your Peak shipping costs, improve your conversions, and add more personalized offerings to your mix?
Are you ready for your Peak?
Deposco mitigates the financial aspects of providing winning customer experiences throughout the year. We’ve built our platform around helping customers own their Peak with predictable delivery, fast onboarding for seasonal staff, self-service order tracking and billing, and more.
Ready to anticipate customer needs, align your Peak Season fulfillment operations, and find a partner who drives your long-term growth? Talk to us today!