Feb 18, 2021 | Blog, The Fulfillment Innovation Wheel
ShipHero recently launched The Fulfillment Innovation Wheel to help 3PLs understand what capabilities and service offerings they need to implement in order to be successful and to help online retailers and brands choose which 3PL is right for them by allowing them to ‘check the boxes’.
The Fulfillment Innovation Wheel listed a set of twelve (12) capabilities that fulfillment providers and logistics companies should implement to continually delight their customers and push themselves towards greater success and innovation.
The twelve capabilities are:
- 2-Day Delivery
- Same Day Shipping
- At the Box Personalization
- Designed for Returns
- Sustainable Fulfillment
- Resilient Shipping
- Distributed Fulfillment
- Data Now
- Automation
- Scale Up and Out
- Integration Stack
- Professional Services
In this article, we will be diving into Capability #9: Automation.
And be sure to stay tuned for future articles as we deep-dive into each capability.
Capability #9: Automation
The mundane, the menial, the humdrum, the everyday monotony… these are the types of business activities that should and could be automated. Why spend your valuable time copy and pasting shipping information across your systems? Or manually inputting return information? Or constantly checking inventory levels? Let automation work for you!
As a business owner, your fulfillment provider should also understand that your time is your most valuable resource. If you are just starting out, you may be able to manually handle it all on your own. But when your business grows bigger and bigger, and the orders are rolling in, you risk spreading yourself too thin, giving yourself no time to get your head above water and focus on your business’s long-term strategy.
If you get to the point where the everyday tasks of your fulfillment process seems to be your only focus, it’s definitely the right time to switch to a fulfillment provider that can automate these for you.
ShipHero’s Automation Cookbook
For that reason, ShipHero has partnered with Alloy to unlock smart automations that improve inventory control and warehouse operations with just a few clicks, while integrating ShipHero with 60+ apps to improve the fulfillment experience and grow your business.
The few example recipes below from ShipHero’s automation cookbook give you a glimpse at the power of automation between workflows, and may enlighten you to possibilities you never thought possible.
Recipe: Send reorder emails or Slack notifications to staff for low inventory in ShipHero
Our workflow automates reorder emails to be sent to staff when there is low inventory in ShipHero. This ensures that your team can restock inventory at a reasonable pace and without over-stocking, and is a great way to organize the flow of customer traffic and inventory.
Recipe: Tag Shopify orders based on ShipHero delivery date
This workflow tags Shopify orders based on the ShipHero delivery date. This means that all orders are tagged by date allowing you to view which days are busy and how many orders are expected to ship out weekly. Tagging orders is a good way to stay organized especially when your store is expanding globally and there are multiple orders placed on the same day.
Recipe: Set a ShipHero threshold to notify store owner of low inventory
This workflow notifies you when your inventory is low in ShipHero. For instance, inventory levels are updated regularly and you receive inventory levels for each inventory item. When stock is low, you receive a notification. Immediate notifications to store owners are key to restocking your inventory and satisfying your eager customers. These notifications can be sent through Slack and email.
Recipe: If an order is still unfulfilled in ShipHero after 2 days, email me
This automation will schedule a workflow after 2 days. Then, it will check to see if the order is unfulfilled for greater than or equal to 2 days. This will trigger an email notification to the store owner. This frees you up from constantly checking the fulfillment status of your orders.
Recipe: Automate fulfillment for Gorgias returns requests in ShipHero
This workflow automates fulfillment for Gorgias return requests in ShipHero. When a customer requests a return on Shippo, a Gorgias request is immediately created and sent. This frees up time from going back and forth between Shippo and Gorgias and ensures no information is lost.
Recipe: Cancel ShipHero scheduled delivery if there is a Gorgias request
With this automation, customers can send in a support ticket for a cancellation request. Once your team marks it as a canceled order, an email is sent to the ShipHero fulfillment team so they won’t fulfill the order.
Recipe: Send ShipHero delivery updates via Klaviyo SMS
SMS messages can have open rates as high as 98% and you’re not limited to using them for promotional campaigns. With this workflow, you can send delivery updates to customers through a text message to leverage higher open and engagement rates.
In addition to the above, Alloy also has delivery update automations for Omnisend SMS, PostScript, SMSBump, and Tone, and more integrations are created all the time.
Our customers love the automation capabilities that ShipHero provides. We attribute this success on the Fulfillment Innovation Wheel to Capability #10: Automation.
Stay tuned next as we cover Capability #6: Resilient Shipping! Viva la resilience. ShipHero.
Learn more about ShipHero’s industry-leading warehouse management software.
Feb 15, 2021 | Blog, The Fulfillment Innovation Wheel
ShipHero recently launched The Fulfillment Innovation Wheel to help 3PLs understand what capabilities and service offerings they need to implement in order to be successful and to help online retailers and brands choose which 3PL is right for them by allowing them to ‘check the boxes’.
The Fulfillment Innovation Wheel listed a set of twelve (12) capabilities that fulfillment providers and logistics companies should implement to continually delight their customers and push themselves towards greater success and innovation.
The twelve capabilities are:
- 2-Day Delivery
- Same Day Shipping
- At the Box Personalization
- Designed for Returns
- Sustainable Fulfillment
- Resilient Shipping
- Distributed Fulfillment
- Data Now
- Automation
- Scale Up and Out
- Integration Stack
- Professional Services
In this article, we will be diving into Capability #12: Professional services.
And be sure to stay tuned for future articles as we deep-dive into each capability.
Capability #12: Professional Services
If you want to grow your business, your Warehouse Management Software (WMS) needs to keep up by collecting and processing more data, offering users more capabilities and automation, and providing more customizable reports and integrations. As WMS grow more and more powerful with each iteration, naturally so does its complexity. That’s why business owners who want to get the most out of their WMS are turning to Professional Services offered by their fulfillment provider.
Customization
App developers try to make WMS interfaces as easy to use as possible, and often take a one-size-fits-all approach to developing their solution. When that doesn’t cut it for your business, Professional Services are the perfect way to custom-fit the solution to your exact specifications.
ShipHero customers can select a wide range of customization services that include (but are not limited to):
- Custom reports
- Custom invoices and labeling
- Custom API integrations
- And more!
Error Correction
Everyone makes mistakes! Professional Services are the easy way to get you right back on track with your WMS.
For error correction, ShipHero offers:
- Manual/Bulk Data correction
- Re-running Automation Rules
- Integration testing/debugging
- And more!
Consulting
Sometimes you just need an expert opinion. Warehouse process and development experts stand at the ready to help you figure out the tough problems.
ShipHero’s experts are available to provide:
- Warehouse Process Consulting
- API Consulting
- Onboarding Consulting
- And more!
So, does your fulfillment provider give you the attention and service that you need? Whether you need a quick fix over the phone or a more hands-on approach with our onsite visits, ShipHero helps its customers any way they can through their extensive list of Professional Service. Not only that, ShipHero maintains a community of customers that all chip in to help each other.
It’s this white-glove approach to service that brings an average of 100 new signups for our fulfillment service per day, and we attribute this success on the Fulfillment Innovation Wheel to Capability #12: Professional Services.
Stay tuned next as we cover Capability #11: Integration Stack! Integrate-ful for your business. ShipHero.
Learn more about ShipHero’s industry-leading warehouse management software.
Feb 11, 2021 | Best Practices, Blog, Fulfillment, Warehouse Management Software, Warehouse Operations
The incumbent President of the United States made quick work in demonstrating to our citizens and the rest of the world exactly what our country’s priorities will be for the next four years and beyond. Within his first week of taking office, President Joe Biden enacted a long list of executive orders that sought solutions to the pressing issues stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic, immigration, and climate change.
Sustainability has been of great importance to the Biden administration since his Vice Presidency, and continued to be a main aspect of his campaign during the 2020 election, so it came as no surprise when President Joe Biden signed an executive order to initiate his plan to combat climate change through a Clean Energy Revolution and Environmental Justice.
No matter who you voted for, it’s time to get acquainted with his stance on climate change, what measures the government will be taking to lower our carbon footprint, and how the logistics industry will be impacted. In essence, it comes down to carbon emissions and the railroad.
Carbon Emissions
Under Biden’s leadership, the United States rejoined the Paris Agreement on climate change, which calls us to determine a reduction target for emissions and direct our federal agencies to execute on that promise.
For example, US agencies have been directed to purchase American-made, zero-emission vehicles, and suspend new oil and natural gas leases on public lands in hopes to conserve at least 30% of federal lands and waters over the next ten years.
The Biden Plan for a Clean Energy Revolution and Environmental Justice also promises to make major public investments in automobile infrastructure, including 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations, while accelerating R&D on battery technology and battery production. This is sure to increase production and widespread use of EV vehicles, buses, and trucks for transportation.
Impact to Logistics
Sustainability
As the current pandemic situation unfolds, sustainability in the supply chain has gone by the wayside as urgency and necessity push for speed and reliability in shipping. But even still, some shoppers opt to use the Amazon Day feature to try and offset their purchases with their rationale being, if they have to come here, at least let them bring more than one thing. Post-COVID however, sustainability will be sure to resume as a large priority for consumers and retailers once more.
For fulfillment providers, retailers will push for low-carbon and zero-carbon (if not negative) emissions throughout the supply chain. There will be a push for clean transportation options, namely electric vehicles (EV) including electric trucks for long-distance shipping, whereas air freight has the worst carbon emissions.
Although it remains unclear what Environmental Justice specifically entails, we don’t find it out of the realm of possibilities that a national carbon tax could be introduced similar to Canada, Britain or some US states, or rather an incentivized stimulus for low-emitting companies. If enacted, a carbon tax could make logistics companies like Amazon rethink their air-heavy fulfillment strategy and make way for 3PLs that are built on sustainable practices.
But where, WHERE, are these sustainable transportation methods coming from?, you may have shouted into your computer screen. Well, toot toot, the answer to that falls on…
The Railroad
Biden’s plan aims to spark “The Second Great Railroad Revolution”, a push to modernize US rail infrastructure, which will ensure that we have the cleanest, safest, and fastest rail system in the world — for both passengers and freight.
A US Rail Revolution will not only reduce pollution, by working with Amtrak and private freight rail companies to further electrify the rail system, but also provide workers with “good, union” jobs and stimulate investment in communities better linked to major metropolitan areas. In order to streamline the loan process and make capital more available for the railway industry, Biden has tapped existing federal grant and loan programs at the US Department of Transportation.
Impact to Logistics
Multi-modal
Currently, fulfillment is dominated by ground travel, with long-distance trucking and last-mile delivery vans. Although rail freight can carry 400 times what a single truckload can with much fewer emissions, the current process for fulfillment by rail is too complex and downright costly. However, Biden’s plan could be the answer for this.
By modernizing rail freight and designing it for today’s eCommerce world, rail freight could once again become a viable option, and 3PL providers that account for this shift could disrupt the logistics industry entirely by cornering the multi-modal transportation space.
Multi-modal transport (also known as combined transport) is the transportation of goods under a single contract, but performed with at least two different modes of transport, often performed by contracted sub-carriers. The carrier responsible for the entire carriage is referred to as a multimodal transport operator, or MTO.
So, any 3PL that can become the leading MTO could position themselves to become the 4th major player in logistics and fulfillment, with UPS and Fedex at capacity, and Amazon weighed down by its traditional infrastructure.
Conclusion
We’re no fulfill-osophers, but we do predict that a smart logistics provider like ShipHero, one built to scale through agility, will be perfectly positioned to quickly claim market share and delight their customers with sustainable shipping and multi-modal options.
Through use of already existing clean energy and green technologies, the logistics industry can lead the way towards sustainable practices in eCommerce supply chains. Moreover, the pandemic-caused boom of eCommerce has given rise to a plethora of opportunities and growth in the fulfillment space; and where money goes, progress follows.
Investments to improve fulfillment practices driven by big data and blockchain will be the spark necessary for companies to derive ROI from their sustainable practices, and effectively contribute to Green Joe’s climate plan.
Learn more about ShipHero’s industry-leading warehouse management software.
Feb 10, 2021 | Blog, The Fulfillment Innovation Wheel
ShipHero recently launched The Fulfillment Innovation Wheel to help 3PLs understand what capabilities and service offerings they need to implement in order to be successful and to help online retailers and brands choose which 3PL is right for them by allowing them to ‘check the boxes’.
The Fulfillment Innovation Wheel listed a set of twelve (12) capabilities that fulfillment providers and logistics companies should implement to continually delight their customers and push themselves towards greater success and innovation.
The twelve capabilities are:
- 2-Day Delivery
- Same Day Shipping
- At the Box Personalization
- Designed for Returns
- Sustainable Fulfillment
- Resilient Shipping
- Distributed Fulfillment
- Data Now
- Automation
- Scale Up and Out
- Integration Stack
- Professional Services
In this article, we will be diving into Capability #11: Integration Stack.
And be sure to stay tuned for future articles as we deep-dive into each capability.
Capability #11: Integration Stack
These days, all you need to start an online business is a laptop and a dream. With just a few clicks, more and more people are chasing their entrepreneurial passions by leveraging eCommerce platforms like Shopify, Wix and Squarespace, which provide all the software solutions that they need to get their business up and running.
Online businesses today are piecemealed together by a whole assortment of cloud applications, created by different app developers with different methodologies, to accomplish a specific task, e.g, returns, transactional emails, shipping labels, etc. However, without a way to tie them all together, the benefits from the expertise are lost when the entrepreneur is forced to spend enormous effort in navigating from one app to another, figuring out how to transfer information between all of their tools.
So, the eCommerce platforms like Shopify are not inherently powerful in and of themselves; rather, the real power of these platforms lies in their ability to integrate seamlessly with multiple solutions, tying in expertise from a whole plethora of applications that are otherwise customized to do one, specific thing.
Similarly, fulfillment providers need to be able to integrate seamlessly into your business, not to mention offer automation tools to speed up your workflows, leaving you time to focus on what really matters.
The Fulfillment Integration Stack
Retailers have come to expect that their fulfillment provider integrates into the platforms and applications that they are already using, allowing them to transfer data cross-applications and simplify their business processes. However, this is often no easy task.
Only 3PLs and fulfillment providers that are born from agile methodologies and built to scale can offer the wide-ranging integration methods that retailers demand. Without them, they will only slow down your business and as the old adage goes: time is money.
ShipHero’s integration marketplace offers a suite of valuable integrations that make it easy to connect our customers to a long list of shipping carriers and ecommerce platforms. As seen with our recent integrations with Alloy and Returnly, ShipHero is constantly expanding our capabilities and partnering with companies so that our customers have the very best options when it comes to easy, one-click integrations.
Along with our direct integrations, we also have over 20 partners that provide integrations and systems expertise, as well as an open API so that users can code their own integrations and webhooks if it’s not already on our list.
Our customers love the integration that ShipHero provides. We attribute this success on the Fulfillment Innovation Wheel to Capability #11: Integration Stack.
Stay tuned next as we cover Capability #12: Professional Services! At your service, professionally. ShipHero.
Learn more about ShipHero’s industry-leading warehouse management software.
Feb 3, 2021 | Best Practices, Blog, Warehouse Management Software, Warehouse Operations
By all accounts, gig workers are redefining the American Dream. To date, over one third of Americans take advantage of the Gig Economy to enjoy the freedom of setting their own work schedule and chasing projects that resonate with their passions.
There is only growth for gig workers forecasted on the horizon.
While US regulations are finally catching up to the speed at which the Gig Economy continues to grow, more and more major companies are adding freelancers and gig workers to their workforce at varying positions and ranks, up to about two thirds of major companies currently. And 80% of companies are planning to make the switch to independent work in the coming year.
Specifically, several sectors like the warehouse and ecommerce fulfillment industry are ramping up their use of gig workers due to the flexibility and expertise that they provide. Not only that, gig workers in these industries are constantly being offered full-time work if they need more stability. There’s just too much work in ecommerce fulfillment right now.
Gig workers have more control of their work life now more than ever.
Greater acceptance of remote work has proven to be a win-win situation for gig workers. That’s because their work can now transcend the boundaries of where they can physically show up to work, and at the same time, the demand for work that does require in-person attendance is only skyrocketing.
With the advent of staffing platforms like Indeed and AngelList, it’s never been easier for businesses to find and team up with quality and trusted independent workers. This has led to many predictions that virtual organizations and solely-online retailers will continue to rise through the consistent employment of gig workers.
Gig workers are always adept at finding that next big project.
76% of gig workers claim satisfaction in their work life, despite the pressure to continually find projects. But perhaps it is this pressure, rising to the challenge, designing a personal work style and life, that entices gig workers to this style of work in the first place.
Today, 15% of independent workers have side-gigs, and with services like Indeed and ecommerce platforms like Shopify that allow people to market and sell their services and goods like never before, this proportion is sure to grow.
Are you a Gig Hero?
We at ShipHero are seeking gig workers to become Gig Heroes at our warehouses as Pick-and-Packers and fulfillment specialists, because we value the expertise and flexibility that they bring to a work environment. We are currently hiring experienced warehouse team members to join our team to help us pick, pack & ship orders in our 150,000 sqft warehouse in our network in Pennsylvania. You’ll be part of a team that helps ship over $5 billion of e-commerce orders a year, and there’s always options for full-time employment.
Learn more about ShipHero’s industry-leading warehouse management software.
