Top five mistakes in ecommerce fulfilment
…and how to fix them
Some are technology-based, but surprisingly, many more centre on people. All of them can be fixed quickly and cost-effectively. Here are my top five:
A 1. Not displaying accurate stock status on the website
Laura loves the flowery puff-sleeved blouson and orders one online to arrive before she goes on holiday. The problem is you despatched the last two this morning and you haven’t actually got one in stock. Delays, emails, phone conversations, a substitute product, all leaves Laura feeling badly let down and damages your brand.
Or perhaps an even worse scenario; the
website tells Laura you are out of stock when in fact there are two on the shelf, and you never get Laura’s order in the first place. Either way, this is a problem that is costing
s an independent provider of warehouse management systems, we get to poke about behind the scenes of all kinds of ecommerce businesses, and many struggle with the same challenges.
ecommerce companies huge sums in lost sales, irate customers and unnecessary administration. Many websites simply say in stock or out of stock and have a damaging lag- time that can lead to orders placed for stock that is no longer available. How to fix it: Your system needs to have three inventory categories: on hand, allocated, available. On hand is everything in your warehouse. Allocated is what has been allocated to existing orders. Available is what is available for sale and should show on your website and other sales channels. If this system integrates with your website, Laura and all your other customers see real-time data 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year—problem solved.
2. Not showing stock as available when it arrives
Humans respond to deadlines. In the warehouse this tends to mean that getting orders out of the door takes priority over goods- in. Having to check purchase orders against delivery documents of inbound goods is time- consuming, manual and prone to error, which means that you’re missing the opportunity to sell, sell, sell. How to fix it: If your purchase orders
are imported into a handheld barcode gun, deliveries can be checked-in automatically with a blip of the gun, even when your items are not barcoded. No typing needed. Each item is automatically updated to the website as in-stock quantities, even before it’s put away.
3. Relying on one person for stock locations 10
It’s amazing how many ecommerce warehouses rely on Jim or Edna, or someone else who has been there from the start, to know where everything is and where everything goes. And just about every single warehouse that works on this principle falls down when things get busy, or when holidays or sickness intervene, leaving temps or management wandering down the aisles playing hide and seek. How to fix it: An automated system can barcode locations, directing both stocking and picking. The system can also advise the quickest route and do stock rotations such as first in, first out.
Direct Commerce Catalogue e-business
www.catalog-biz.com By Jonathan Bellwood 4. Misspicking in the warehouse
Your customer in Tunbridge Wells orders a set of garden ducks in green. Your picker, working off a paper pick list, accidentally grabs one in cream, sending the pick list as the despatch note to the customer. The customer tells you it’s not green. The system says it is. You have an unhappy customer, the cost of returns, an inaccurate stock profile and a dented reputation in the Garden of England. How to fix it: Again, technology can help.
An electronic picking list on a handheld barcode gun tells your people what to pick and shows an error message if they scan the wrong item. You can then print the despatch note from the electronic picked list, keeping all your ducks in a row, so to speak. If you have their email, you can send out an electronic despatch note/invoice instead.
5. Double-checking syndrome
Double-checking syndrome is a serious affliction affecting all sizes of warehouse, where someone decides to just take a quick look at someone else’s work. The sad truth is that in our experience, the more humans that touch the products, the more likelihood of incorrect fulfilment. How to fix it: Install an integrated warehouse management system. You are then working with robust reliable real-time data about every item of stock, from the moment it comes into your warehouse, to the second it is despatched. Time after time, warehouse managers throw
in extra people to solve bottlenecks, meet peak demand or try to improve accuracy, when in fact, it’s often the people who cause the problem. From our experience, an automated system will enable you to handle twice the volume with the same number of staff, improve accuracy, improve efficiency, transform sales and customer satisfaction and give you a payback period of less than six months. That’s got to be worth considering.
Jonathan Bellwood is
managing director of PeopleVox, a specialist in warehouse systems for ecommerce businesses.
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