Optimising order fulfilment with data: A step-by-step guide

1. Uncover key business performance data

Locating the right data about your business – namely, that which will deliver the greatest insights – is often challenging. The first place to start looking is the warehouse management software you use daily, and specifically, its reporting functionality.

It is likely that you have access to a range of in-built reports. But which ones will generate the most relevant data? The most useful reports for assessing your current business performance include: 

• Order Despatch Times
• 3PL Accounting
• Stock Holding
• Order Processing Volumes
• Picking Efficiency

If your software is lacking these reports, it might be a sign that you need to upgrade your warehouse management system.

2. Leverage data to determine business position and goals

With the right reports at your fingertips, you are just a few clicks away from assessing your current business performance.

Your reports will help you identify one key, guiding metric that your business should hone in on, which more than any other data point, will show how it is progressing. For instance, to assess the efficiency of your order fulfilment process, a guiding metric is typically the quantity of orders that were sent on time and in full.

With this guiding metric in mind, you can begin exploring your business performance data more thoroughly, while considering your objective. For example, you may desire to maintain your current quantity of fulfilment orders, but also reduce per order costs.

With your guiding metric in mind, you can measure the effect of any changes you make against a single data point. For instance, if your guiding metric is to maintain the quantity of fulfilment orders while reducing costs, your data metrics and reports may show different variables affecting your cost per order. This could include:

• How many staff on shift versus quantity of orders sent
• Average pick rate percentages of disparate teams; or, 
• The costs incurred from different courier providers.

From this data, you will begin to notice patterns, which you can then use to inform operational decisions and establish goals for improvement. For instance, you may observe that due to orders received on Saturdays and Sundays, you require additional warehouse personnel on Mondays. And therefore, you do not need as many staff on other days of the week.

Armed with insights from your historical data, you can start to plan ahead by adjusting future staff levels in line with the quantity of orders you are likely to receive. You may even establish an average cost per order goal to make sure that you assign the optimal number of staff, so as to reduce your costs.

3. Use new data to make improvements

At this stage, you will have access to the right data and reports to discover where changes can be made in your business. And you will be able to measure the effect that those changes have on productivity and efficiency.

For instance, you can ascertain your ideal staffing levels by leveraging your Picking Efficiency report and Order Expectancy data. You can then compare this against your fulfilment performance data to measure your cost per order over a certain period. And if your cost per order is too high, make any necessary changes.

To ensure that your business is running as efficiently as possible, it is vital to regularly assess your business performance against your guiding metric.

Getting started on your data analytics journey

These three steps will help you get started on the path of using data analytics to monitor, improve and grow your business. But remember, it is just the beginning. As you become more knowledgeable about the data you have, you will likely find new and more effective ways to gain insights that will help you really move the needle.

To recap, the critical steps on getting started on your data analytics journey are:

• Develop reports or dashboards that provide the most valuable data
• Determine a single metric that will guide you when analysing data
• Identify a specific area within your business to improve and the variable factors that influence that area
• Regularly track your progress and make necessary adjustments as needed