How to fly through peak season: your checklist for order fulfillment

Introduction

In the famous words of Benjamin Franklin, "By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail." And that is ultimately what peak season success comes down to: preparation.

Peak season will inevitably bring a rise in purchases and e-commerce order fulfilment, drawn in by various Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales, as well as festive gift-buying in the run-up to Christmas.

Being well prepared and the resulting successful peak season will lead to happy customers who meet their expectations, happy staff with a manageable workload, and a happy bottom line at the end of it all.

1. Start your peak season strategy with analysis and forecasting

It can feel like a balancing act to ensure we have enough stock to cover the Black Friday/Cyber Monday to Christmas season. Black Friday sales online alone are growing rapidly, and with a 3.5% rise globally in 2022, it's hard to imagine holiday seasons slowing down anytime soon.

Back to this year, you need enough stock to cover orders but not excess inventory that takes up valuable space for you or your warehouse partners and costs you money. But how do you know what's enough and what isn't?

Transparency and visibility are essential when it comes to being prepared for peak season.

As a minimum, you should:

Have a clear view of your current stock levels
Know where everything is being stored
Have access to previous order data

A cross-analysis of last peak season's order data and current stock availability highlights where there might be shortages and excesses of products. Accurate software for cash flow forecasting, as well as a clear picture of inventory management, means you'll know what you need to order from suppliers more frequently so you can continue your customer order fulfilment management.

Real-time problems require real-time warehouse management software, which helps you to analyse and predict trends to anticipate the needs of your clients and prevent delays caused by disruptions in supply chain management.

You know peak season in Australia will be busy, but predicting the products that will be popular and the order levels you can expect helps you prepare for the inevitable rise in purchases.

2. Add automation to your order fulfilment process

Customer expectations are at an all-time high – there is no room for errors when picking and packing orders over the peak season. Something as minor as an incorrect order or missing item can be enough for online retailers to lose customer loyalty. Even if you sell your products as a third-party logistics provider (3PL) or online, you must keep your customers happy.

With high order volumes, it is easy to make mistakes when handling the order process. Automating your processes will reduce errors and help deliver a more responsive and consistent service, especially when employees are extra busy.

For 3PLs and warehouses, implementing order management software can reap the benefits of automation by implementing mobile barcode picking. Mobile barcode picking is a widely-used technology becoming very popular in distribution centres and warehouses that have outgrown their paper-based order fulfilment processes.

A survey of online retailers by Stitch Labs revealed that almost two-thirds (66 per cent) of inventory or order fulfilment challenges are because of human error from manual processes. A warehouse barcode system can reduce the possibility of these errors with up to 100% accuracy for picking. You can book your inbound deliveries and manage warehouse inventory, reduce errors, and enable real-time inventory visibility.

Imagine you have an 18,000 square metre warehouse space and thousands of products. Finding one specific product without knowing where it can be found is like finding a needle in a haystack, which could take hours. In this instance, a barcode warehouse management system can help drive cost-efficient time savings with a streamlined process and means your staff can find where products are in seconds.

For a full list of manual fulfilment errors and the impact they can make, read our article: How much are manual errors costing your e-commerce business?

Data collection, processing and analysis is an area guaranteed to change for the warehousing sector in the future. Many businesses have switched to fully online data management systems, which provide greater efficiency, security and accessibility across all daily operations.

For many retail businesses, capturing, tracking, and fulfilling orders across more than two sales channels can be tricky. An order management system is one option to add automation to your existing order processes, allowing you to take control of the entire dispatch process, from picking packaging to shipping orders.

With self-driving cars and delivery drones continuing to evolve, customers' expectations may shift from 'same day' to 'same hour'. This would result in an urgent need to streamline a warehouse management system to maintain customer satisfaction and transform how items are picked, how labels are printed, and how staff and machines work together.

3. Increase connections and integrations

For retailers who manage different online stores or offer products through marketplaces such as Amazon, it can be hard to keep track of all incoming orders and stock levels for each e-commerce store. Integrating as many of your marketplaces and other integrations into your order management system puts most of your order fulfilment management in one place.

3PLs and warehouses often use software that is integrated with related systems such as ERP accounting software, order management systems, or delivery management software.

To run an order fulfilment company efficiently throughout peak season, you will likely need to connect to additional integrations such as:

Managing all your systems in a single location means you can switch between different integrations throughout your supply chain execution and order processing. Your warehouse, inventory, and delivery management software can communicate data in real-time.

Suppose you cannot centralise control of all the shipping and fulfilment systems you need. In that case, you may be manually transferring data from one system to another so you can perform tasks, including raising invoices for your customers or updating your inventory levels in the warehouse, which is far from the most efficient way to work.

Watch the case study of Australian 3PL Black Bear Fulfillment, who use Access Mintsoft for an efficient order fulfilment process. They boast a 99.97% accuracy rating on orders!

4. Make sure your logistics and courier partners are top-notch

A recurring challenge during the peak season is shipping. Customers are forever demanding shorter and cheaper delivery times. Delivery strategies, such as: "Same-day delivery", "Express delivery", or "Next day delivery" are all extremely popular with customers.

If you're doing everything in-house, make sure your order fulfilment team are ready to prepare and ship high volumes of products as fast as they can. If it's becoming too much and you're an online seller, consider outsourcing this responsibility to a third-party logistics company.

Warehouse and logistics planning are crucial for the peak season. As a business owner, there can be much to consider when you select your couriers - some of the critical aspects could be:

Warehouse/storage options
Delivery region (state-only, nationwide or international)
Speed of dispatch
Delivery timeframe options
Service Level Agreements (SLAs)
Tracking your data and customer communications

A single courier may only be able to offer some of what is required. In these instances, you can choose to partner with multiple using courier management software. For example, having a cohort of delivery partners can give you greater flexibility. If one courier can't accommodate your shipment, you have an alternative delivery method to ensure customer satisfaction. For e-commerce sales, it can give customers the autonomy to select shipping options that suit their budget and timescales.

Due to high demand during peak season, carriers are likely to announce drastic cost increases and warn about slow delivery times, as well as raising fees beyond what we've seen before. Leveraging a multi-carrier strategy can be an effective way to get orders to customers swiftly and accurately, meeting their expectations.

5. Be prepared for Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Christmas returns

When selling products online, product returns are inevitable. Especially during peak season, when people shop for more deals than any other time of the year. According to Salesforce, 13% of all orders in 2022 purchased throughout the peak season were returned. Whether it's clothes that don't fit, fragile goods that are damaged, or faulty electronics, consumers will return their items if they differ from what they expected.

Efficient and effective product returns management is part of the customer journey and is as essential as sale and order management. Whether you're working with customers or handling returns for other sellers, it is vital to have a clear understanding of returns policies. Retailers need to ensure that it meets any requirements set out by consumer rights. 3PLs and warehouses need to have the required resources to deal with customer order returns.

A dedicated resource for returns management is essential, as processes can be complex. It ensures efficiency in processing returns promptly, enhances customer satisfaction by prioritising return requests, provides valuable insights for quality control and process improvement, enables accurate tracking and reporting of return data, helps reduce costs associated with returns, ensures compliance with legal requirements, and allows businesses to continuously refine their returns management processes for optimal efficiency and customer service.

If handling returns for e-commerce orders internally isn't manageable, working with a third-party returns management company offers specialised expertise, scalability, cost savings, efficient processes, enhanced customer experience, access to analytics, and international capabilities. It allows businesses to optimise returns management while focusing on core operations and growth.

Businesses do not need software to manage returns; however, ultimately, how to handle returns will depend on your business requirements.

Adding inventory management software to your tech stack can further streamline your returns process by utilising automation. Inventory management software can help you automate customer communications during the returns process, process refunds when required, and give you better visibility and tracking of the returned goods.

In summary

We hope this guide inspires you to be as organised as possible during this year's peak selling season. These may not be the only dos and don'ts, but our list should give you the starting point that you need to keep afloat this time around.

Get prepared for Black Friday, Cyber Monday and the Christmas season in Australia with Access Mintsoft. Mintsoft is our cloud-based order fulfilment and warehouse management software, used by online retailers, 3PL and warehouses worldwide to fly through peak seasons with confidence.

Book your free demo or download our brochure today to discover how Access Mintsoft can help your 3PL, warehouse or e-commerce business save time, reduce costs and stand out from the competition this silly season.

Discover how Mintsoft transforms peak season into a seamless experience with our 4-minute video tour.