Warehousing Challenges to Overcome for a Successful Ecommerce Business
Come read our blog to learn about the most common challenges that companies must overcome in order to succeed in a multi-channel world, as well as some suggestions for improving their digital capabilities.
The tremendous shift toward e-commerce has prompted warehousing operations to quickly embrace multi-channel fulfillment, leaving little room for error or inefficiencies. While this presents certain challenges, e-commerce retail and the push beyond traditional retail fulfillment offer new opportunities to achieve and maintain a competitive edge. Here are some of the most common challenges organizations need to master if they wish to be successful in a multi-channel world, and some recommendations to upgrade their digital capabilities:
Improve Visibility of Available Inventory
Improving visibility has become especially important during the pandemic, with the chaotic fluctuations in both supply and demand. Warehouse managers need to be highly accurate not just about what they currently have available in the warehouse, but also about what’s going to be coming in.
One solution to improving visibility is investing in a Warehouse Management System (WMS) that provides reports and dashboards to meet the information requirements of sales, marketing, and supply chain personnel. Ideally, the system should include real-time dashboard visualizations that can be seen from anywhere in the warehouse.
Become More Flexible to Handle Different Order Sizes
Many warehouses are set up to prioritize fulfillment to retail stores with truckload and pallet-load orders. In the last few years, e-commerce has led to a proliferation of delivery options, from straight-to-consumer to Buy Online, Pickup in Store (BOPIS). E-commerce dominating the market is also resulting in higher quantities of smaller orders, and companies must develop the capability to fulfill that range of sizes efficiently.
Companies face the difficulty of legacy systems that are not flexible enough to meet the new demands. An upgrade or replacement in this sense will help decide exactly how to handle different orders, analyze the flow and costs, and identify bottlenecks. In essence, a warehouse operator needs to be able to pick and pack orders for individual end-consumers, like a retailer.
Set up a Process to Make Seamless Returns
One of the essential parts of e-commerce fulfillment is managing returns. It is important to perform quality checks and verifications, maximizing the number of returns that are restocked rather than liquidated or, worse, sent to landfill.
In this case, besides performing functions such as return shipping, warranty documentation, or getting credits back to the consumer, it is worth investing in online tools that involve the customer in the return process, allowing them to specify their preferred return protocols and receive updates on the process, even while the return is still in transit. Alternatively, if the return is processed through the store, the customer should be able to communicate directly with the store’s Point-of-Sale (POS) system to get all the information they need upfront.
Adopt a Responsive Carrier Selection Strategy to Manage Last-Mile Fulfillment
With the increase of smaller individual deliveries from warehouses, the last mile can easily become a bottleneck. It is thus more important than ever to arrange outward transportation quickly. There are numerous carriers to choose from (depending on dispatch location and destination), each with a unique service offering distinguished by speed, cost, and delivery time.
This is where the advantages of incorporating a multi-carrier management system into the WMS become apparent. Organizations must streamline this process, seamlessly marrying carrier selection with fulfillment and dispatch functions, allowing them to choose transportation services at a moment's notice, regardless of where they are based.
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