Jun 7, 2021 | Best Practices, Blog, Warehouse Management Software
Introduction
The era of ecommerce runs on data. On a daily basis, terabytes upon terabytes of information are collected and analyzed. Although these data stores hold the key to ecommerce success with valuable insight for those that can find them, there is no way that the average person can break down and understand all that sales and order fulfillment data in a reasonable amount of time. That is where Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) come into play.
KPIs allow you to organize your company’s data and set specific and actionable goals against them. From social media to shipping logistics, you can use this information to track marketing trends, warehouse inventory, and customer service interactions. By breaking your KPIs down into categories as seen in this article, you can get a better idea of which tools might help you take the next step with your business.
Here are some of the KPIs that are worth exploring for ecommerce businesses:
Ecommerce Sales KPIs
If you want to track your ecommerce sales effectively, these are some of the most helpful KPIs.
Conversation Rates
When it comes to managing your marketing output, you need to know how many consumers interact with your advertising material. These conversations give you a better idea of how well your marketing campaigns are performing and which ones may need a little bit of improvement.
Cost of Goods Sold
The cost of goods sold lets you know how much your business spent manufacturing the products or services you’ve released into the world. These KPIs are ideal for revenue calculations and can help you to identify places in which to cut your production costs, should the need arise.
Lifetime Value
Repeat customers are the lifeblood of a business. Lifetime value KPIs help you track how many times particular customers return to your business and how much they’ve spent. These customers tend to cost you less to acquire, as they already have some awareness of your brand.
Revenue Per Visitor
Instead of identifying how much repeat consumers have spent at your storefront, these KPIs will instead calculate the average amount that a generic consumer may spend on your ecommerce platform.
Customer Acquisition Cost
Wooing consumers isn’t cheap. If you want to get a better idea of how much you’re spending to win sales from your consumers, though, this KPI can run the calculations for you. That way, you can have a better idea about which advertising campaigns are pulling their weight and which ones you may need to adjust.
Ecommerce Marketing KPIs
Want to understand the impact of your marketing? Take a look at these KPIs.
Site Traffic
A site traffic KPI lets you know how many people come to your platform, along with what their demographics are, whether they made any purchases, and which platforms they found your ecommerce website on.
Return on Ad Spend
Your advertising ROI is one of the factors that influences your success. A return on ad spend KPI lets you know how your consumer revenue compares to the amount of money you spent on a particular advertising campaign. These ratios will give you a better idea about which campaigns are performing well and which may need to be fine tuned.
Bounce Rate
Bounce rate KPIs let you know how a consumer interacts with your website and what ratio of visitors are leaving your site right away. These KPIs are ideal for identifying bot behavior, too, if you think a competitor may be spamming your site.
Newsletter Subscriptions
If you run a consistent email marketing campaign, it’s important to know just how well your campaigns are doing. Newsletter subscription KPIs keep track of new and retained newsletter subscriptions, ensuring that you have a better idea of who you’re talking to when you send out your newsletter each week.
Social Media Engagement
Social media is the lifeblood of the digital business. Engagement KPIs let you know who is interacting with your content online, either via comments, shares, or likes. These KPIs also let you keep track of which platforms you perform well on and how far your content has been shared by unaffiliated consumers.
Ecommerce Customer Service KPIs
Want to know how your customers feel about your products and service? Take a look at these customer service KPIs for ecommerce.
Customer Satisfaction Score
Like ROI, customer satisfaction score is an important variable that can impact your company’s success. Your KPIs generate this score based on the answers consumers provide on post-purchase or post-experience surveys.
While it isn’t always easy to get consumers to participate in these surveys, the ones that do can still provide you with valuable information about your company’s success. You can compare your existing KPI scores against the national average to determine what you could be doing more effectively.
First Response Time
Want to keep track of the amount of time it takes your HR team to respond to a customer’s concerns? First response time KPIs track just that. With this data at hand, you can improve your HR guidelines, specifying faster response times to cultivate improved relationships with your customers.
Customer Resolution Time
In a similar vein, there are KPIs available that let you know how long it takes your HR team to address and resolve a consumer’s product-related concerns.
Ecommerce Shipping and Logistics KPIs
A customer has made a purchase. Now what? Take a look at these KPIs for shipping and logistics.
Order Fulfillment and Accuracy
No one likes to receive an order that isn’t theirs. This KPI lets you know how many packages you’ve shipped that have successfully arrived at the appropriate destination. If the order fulfillment values start to dip, then you’ll need to consider the influence it can have on customer opinions about your business.
Order accuracy data will also let you know whether your 3PL delivery line needs to be improved. If you’re sitting on an unusually low percentage of accurate orders, then there may be line errors at your warehouse that you need to address.
Inventory Levels
Whether you have invested in warehousing solutions or store your own inventory, you need to know where your inventory levels stand on a day-to-day basis. Rely on inventory level KPIs to replenish your stock when necessary and to calculate your business’s average supply-to-demand ratio.
Order Volume
If you’re manufacturing products several months in advance, you need to know how much of your inventory goes out per month on average. Order volume KPIs calculate your sales by day, month, or quarter, depending on your needs. You can use year-out estimates to track the ebb and flow of your sales and to pre-produce inventory for each month.
Wrap It Up
With the collection and tracking of the above KPIs, you’ll keep your finger on the pulse of the health and success of your ecommerce business. From marketing KPIs that gauge the success of your advertising efforts, to shipping and logistics KPIs that illustrate how efficiently you get products to customers, an effective KPI reporting strategy gives your company’s decision-makers all the information they need to make informed choices.
Jun 14, 2021 | Blog, The Packet
Front and Center
How the internet got broked :-P~
If you were to be perusing the interwebs early Tuesday morning, you would have immediately noticed something awry. Websites like Amazon, Reddit, Spotify, eBay, Twitch, Pinterest, many news sites, and even government service pages were showing Error: 503 messages, which typically appear when a website is under maintenance. Many took to message boards to find the cause, and even though service was restored before people started hoarding toilet paper again, it wasn’t until 24 hours later that a root cause was identified — and it turns out that it was a single, Fastly customer… imagine being that person.
No. What’s Fastly?
Fastly is a San Francisco-based cloud computing service provider that effectively makes loading times faster for websites (ah, Fastly, got it.) Yeah, it also optimizes images, videos and other large content to show up quickly when you load a web page. It does this by storing some website data from international websites in local data servers, instead of having to fetch them from faraway host servers every time. This “edge computing” method, which can be thought of as distributed fulfillment but for information, also performs various cybersecurity functions.
So who fudged up? I want names.
Okay psycho. Fastly sits between back-end web servers and the front-facing internet that we see, so any error in their system can cause entire websites to be unavailable.
On June 8, one UNNAMED customer (but pictured at the end) accidentally triggered a bug during a “valid configuration change”, which caused 85% of the company’s network to display errors. Within 60 seconds, the Fastly team identified and disabled the configuration, and within 49 minutes, 95% of the network was operating as normal. Quick work.
Could it happen again?
Fastly announced that it will be taking several steps to avoid outages in the future, including root-cause analyses and a complete evaluation of their bug-fix and deployment processes.
If you feel stressed by more and more companies falling victim to ransomware attacks and now the internet is going down, it may help to step away and take a breather this summer.
Want a free getaway?
Use code SHIPHERO123 at your front door to walk outside and enjoy the roses. Check out this botanical garden directory for roses near you, and tell them ShipHero sent you if you want to confuse the staff.
Back of the Packet
????Heard it Through Pipeline????
On Monday, the Justice Department announced that federal officials had recovered most of the Bitcoin ransom paid out for the recent Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack. While they did not specify how exactly they were able to track down the funds, feds said that they had recouped 63.7 of the 75 bitcoins ($2.3 million of the $4.3 million), exposing a common misconception that Bitcoin payments cannot be traced.
Ready Player 2
Meet Matt Furlong and George Sherman, Gamestop’s new CEO and CFO respectively, and they’re both Amazon-executive alumni. This move continues to signify the Reddit-obsessed gaming company’s efforts to completely level up their e-commerce business.
Amazon’s Privacy Fine
The Luxembourg data protection commission, the CNPD, has proposed a fine of more than $425 million against Amazon.com for violations against the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which allows these privacy regulators to fine company’s up to 4% of a company’s annual revenue. This fine in particular would represent roughly 2% of Amazon’s reported net income ($21.3 billion), due to the violation being administrative in nature.
The Bezos Bros
TO THE MOON!???? (we’ll stop using this one day)
ShipHero News
Relaaaax
Shipping CBD products is now legal across all 50 states, but beware! Companies that want their share of this growing $2.8 billion market must comply with the FDA’s shipping regulations. That’s why we grind up the industry’s best practice and FDA guidance and roll it into this latest how-to guide to grow your CBD business!
Take a ride on the information superhighway!
Did you know: KPIs allow you to organize your company’s data and set specific and actionable goals against them. From social media to shipping logistics, you can use this information to track marketing trends, warehouse inventory, and customer service interactions. Dive into our latest blog for 16 must-track KPIs in 2021!
Best Print-on-Demand Companies of 2021
Whether you hope to make a business out of print-on-demand, want to sell merchandise to spread brand awareness, or think it’d be cool to sell your self-designed “Pfizer Gang” shirts, you must pick the print-on-demand company that’s right for you. In this blog, we explain print-on-demand and identify the top five print-on-demand services as of 2021.
Jun 17, 2021 | Blog, Case Study
You may have a fully stocked makeup bag with brushes, powders, glues, creams, pencils, primers, and more, but still struggle to get the LATAM look. That’s why ShipHero customer, ILOVEPINCH.com, solves your cosmetic challenges with their 9-step, 10-minute makeup routine for the perfect look, every time.
When their breakthrough cosmetic line and application system first came to market, the ILOVEPINCH.com team struggled to keep up with initial demand. They could only pick, pack and ship 100 orders per day, and the costs from mis-picked products and supply chain errors were adding up. After a trip to a fully functioning fulfillment center, they knew it was time to give their fulfillment operations a complete makeover.
“With ShipHero, we now have a replicable ecommerce fulfillment model that allowed us to grow 3X (300%) during the pandemic, and base our whole business model on an e-commerce distribution channel. Nowadays, it is easy for us to expand our operations, faster and with less investment, to other cities and allow our ecommerce to grow exponentially.” — Alfonso Atencio, CEO and Co-founder of ILOVEPINCH.com
With the pandemic-led boom in e-commerce, especially for beauty and cosmetics brands, we had to sit down with ILOVEPINCH.com CEO and Co-founder, Alfonso Atencio and learn more about his business and supply chain operations. Read more about our journey together in this case study.
Alfonso, please introduce us to yourself and your business.
My name is Alfonso Atencio, and I’m the CEO and cofounder of ILOVEPINCH.com. We are a DTC cosmetics e-commerce business aiming to disrupt the LATAM beauty industry by making affordable yet high-quality beauty products for Millennials.
All of this, while committed to being cruelty-free and having a sustainable supply chain. We currently have operations in Colombia, USA, Canada and Puerto Rico, and this year we are expanding our operations and fulfillment centers to Mexico and Perú.
What was your fulfillment model before switching to ShipHero?
Before ShipHero, logistics was a major pain point for our operations. We handled each order informally, and our logistics department generated a considerable amount of back-office and duplicate activities.
On our best day, we could pick and pack at most 100 orders. We also had more than 5% mistakes on product allocation for orders, and this generated an even more cost due to returns.
What was the moment you knew it was time for a switch?
During the pandemic, online purchase behavior skyrocketed, and we were forced to open a new warehouse and fulfillment center in another city in our country, Bogotá.
Besides the growth, just before COVID started taking over in February 2020, we visited one of Amazon’s FBA centers. Instantly we knew we had to take our logistics to the next level.
It was important for us to control operations, mitigate logistics pain points, and reduce overhead costs for the new warehouse. We wanted to implement technology and achieve efficiency for our inventory management, picking, and packing processes. That was when ShipHero came into the picture, and we were able to take our ecommerce to the next level.
It was easy when you started with such a solid foundation. Why did you choose ShipHero? (besides the sweet puns)
Simply put, easy integration with our e-commerce platform, a user-friendly interface, and a complete order and warehouse management system.
What really set ShipHero apart, was the “coolness” and how seamless the tasks looked on the Endeavour App. We knew we had to pick a platform and WMS that understood and could adapt to the new e-commerce trends, integrations, and mechanics.
Also, another key factor was the ability to create specialized rules and interpretations, so that we could make tailored order fulfillment processes that took into account our own conditions and warehouse setup.
What advantages have you seen since switching to ShipHero?
Since integrating with ShipHero, we have boosted our efficiency. We surpassed our previous maximum of at most 100 orders daily, now being able to pick 250-300 orders a day just with one picker.
hipHero allows us to virtually control a new warehouse with a small team in another location, which generates considerable savings by decentralizing our operations and reducing freight costs per order.
From an operations perspective, we also drastically reduced our product allocation mistakes, returns and logistics overcharges.
The operational advantages have been numerous, namely:
- Reduced freight cost due to efficiencies
- Reduced product selection mistakes (AKA mis-picks), therefore fewer returns
- Complete traceability with more automation, by integrating directly with our ecommerce and updating order status. (Before, we had a dedicated person that updated manually each order status).
With ShipHero, we now have a replicable e-commerce fulfillment model, which allowed us to grow 300% during the pandemic and base our whole business model on an e-commerce distribution channel. Nowadays, it is easy for us to expand our operations to other cities faster and with less investment, allowing our e-commerce to scale exponentially.
Follow Alfonso and ILOVEPINCH.com on social media and check out their websites below.
https://shopilovepinch.com/
Want to be featured in our case study?
If you would like to share with us stories about your ecommerce experiences, whether it’s how you started your business, what opinions you have on the stories we share, or if you just feel like venting… we’re here for you.
Shoot us an email and you could be featured on an upcoming Case Study, our critically-acclaimed weekly news segment The Packet, or if you’re lucky, you could be invited to join one of our many Podcast episodes!
Jun 21, 2021 | Blog, The Packet
Front and Center
The Future of Luxury E-commerce
In a joint press release on Wednesday, two mega corporations from distinctly seperate industries announced a first-of-its-kind strategic partnership that may define the future of luxury e-commerce.
French luxury goods giant, LVMH, has entered into a 5-year deal with Google Cloud to leverage artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies to sell products for their elite brands like Louis Vitton, Christian Dior, Tiffany, Marc Jacobs, and top-shelf alcohol brands like Moët and Hennessy.
Will this make it more affordable?
HAHAHAHA. HAHAHA. LOL. Good one, no. But the AI will be used to collect customer data and deliver personalized experiences to their high-end customers when they shop online. Not only that, the technology will also be used to update their IT infrastructure, improve their demand forecasting, and optimize their inventory management across stores.
Take a page out of their golden book.
This partnership brings new-age data analytics capabilities to a historically white-glove, high-touch market. The pandemic-fueled lockdowns have accelerated the need for luxury brands to execute their e-commerce shopping model and help their consumers adapt to changes; for instance, not being able to touch and see their high-priced items before they buy.
LVMH Managing Director Anonio Belloni said, “The last 18 months have been transformational,” and made clear the “need to leverage data.” The goal is to make a customer’s experience “more fluid.”
Without this sort of in-person interaction and added customer service, luxury brands must compensate with a smooth and considerate online retail experience. This includes making sure the logistics and supply chain consistently and reliably pulls through on delivery.
Back of the Packet
Freedom!
This week, both the Senate and the House passed a bill that would make Juneteenth (AKA Freadom Day) a national holiday, and now just needs one more signature from the President. This holiday commemorates the day in 1865 when slavery officially ended in the US, and would be the first federal holiday added to the US calendar since 1983. Many organizations like Mastercard, the NFL, and others have embraced the holiday by giving employees the day off.
A Peloton of Creepers
On Wednesdaya, McAfee warned that the Peloton Bike+, along with other public bikes in gyms and hotels, could be compromised with a USB to allow hackers access to forward-facing cameras. All hackers need is physical access to the bike to install fake Netflix or Spotify apps. Peloton then issued a software update and press release to prevent this type of unauthorized access, but if anyone wants to actually watch me sweat/cry/spin to Adele, I’ll allow it.
Generally Electric Motors
General Motors announced increases to its electric and autonomous spending to $35B by 2025, a 30% increase from targets announced last November.
ShipHero News
Convenience Vs. Carbon
Expedited shipping and last mile delivery grew with the pandemic-led convenience craze. Now that consumers are returning their focus to sustainability, brands and 3PLs must balance convenience vs. carbon footprint. But how? The answer… read our latest blog to discover why carbon-neutral shipping is changing the e-commerce industry, and how your brand can offer it today.
How E-Commerce Brands Thrive In the Chinese Market
Despite China’s developing economy and huge population, their market is notoriously difficult for foreign businesses to survive, particularly those with a physical presence. Popular companies like Walmart, Home Depot, and Mattel have tried and failed to create a steady business in China, due to conflicts with the government, failing to understand their customers, or just bad luck. With 48% of foreign businesses failing in China within their first two years, these tips might save your business when entering the Far East markets.
Jun 23, 2021 | newsroom
Riverwood Capital invests in ShipHero to accelerate its product roadmap and consolidate its leadership in helping brands and mid-large merchants with their ecommerce shipping and fulfillment needs
New York, New York – June 23rd, 2021 – ShipHero, the leading e-commerce fulfillment technology and outsourced fulfillment provider, announces today the close of a $50 million round led by high-growth tech investor Riverwood Capital. ShipHero provides a best-in-class warehouse management software-as-a-service platform for companies that want to ship from their own facilities, as well as a next generation outsourced fulfilment service to DTC brands and merchants utilizing ShipHero’s owned and operated facilities. The business ships out of three warehouses strategically located across the US; that number is expected to grow to ten by the end of 2021.
ShipHero serves more than 5,000 mid-to-large brands and merchants, including several Fortune 500 customers, and focuses on providing the most efficient and tech-driven solution for its customers to scale their ecommerce operations while delivering a superior shipping and digital experience to their consumers.
This primary investment represents ShipHero’s first institutional funding. CEO and Founder Aaron Rubin and his team bootstrapped ShipHero into a leading platform, building a SaaS solution for warehouse management and a highly-efficient and scalable outsourced fulfillment offering. The company now processes over $5 billion of ecommerce gross merchandise volume (GMV) annually, which is more than Shopify at the time of its IPO. In 2020 alone, ShipHero tripled its revenue as the company led the industry in logistics and fulfillment amid growing demand on ecommerce customers.
Prior to the investment from Riverwood, ShipHero had avoided taking venture capital or strategic funding. “We have always been focused on long-term impact and on building a solid software-driven and high-quality foundation, and for years staying independent gave us the most flexibility in how we achieve that impact,” says Aaron Rubin, CEO and Founder of ShipHero. “Our market opportunity has expanded significantly, and we have a great opportunity to accelerate our offering to clients as they digitize their businesses. The industry has raised a lot of capital recently and we were approached by high quality investors. Riverwood has a sterling reputation for allowing companies to grow in their own way and has invaluable experience with taking companies public, both of which were very important for us.”
ShipHero has built its company with a customer-first approach, continuously rolling out new technology to meet the increasing demands of the ecommerce landscape and is the leading provider of warehouse management solutions and outsourced fulfillment services to Shopify brands as a Shopify Plus partner.
ShipHero is loved by its customers with exceptional online reviews and user ratings that are significantly higher than its competitors. “It’s been incredible watching ShipHero grow into the company we are today,” adds Maggie Barnett, COO of ShipHero. “We are entering into an exciting phase with Riverwood Capital and look forward to further expanding our capabilities as the category leader in ecommerce logistics and fulfillment.”
“Demand for warehouse management and fulfillment solutions are growing at a significant pace driven by continued online and ecommerce adoption, which was only further accelerated by COVID-related lockdowns,” said Francisco Alvarez-Demalde, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Riverwood Capital. “Brands, retailers, and merchants need to constantly improve their service and digital experience which mandates a trusted technology and fulfillment partner to ship quickly and efficiently. ShipHero has built an incredible leading platform, combining scalable and flexible software with world class and efficient operations which can ultimately help brands scale ecommerce operations while delivering the best customer service.”
“When we first met Aaron, Maggie and the team, we were drawn to their thoughtful, grounded approach to building a high-growth business,” said Joe De Pinho, Principal at Riverwood Capital. “ShipHero punches far above its weight, offering a better solution and winning market share from well-funded competitors. With a Rule of 40 metric in excess of 150%, CAC payback of a few months, a category leading software platform, and strong referrals in place from happy customers, ShipHero has reached its current growth stage and over 200 employees with only $500k in external funding. At ShipHero, the focus has always been about delivering customer satisfaction while building with scalability in mind and we are excited to support their mission to empower e-commerce merchants.”
About ShipHero
ShipHero is a US based, leading provider of cloud-based e-commerce fulfillment solutions for mid-large shippers. With more than 5,000 customers located around the globe, ShipHero offers online retailers a suite of services ranging from warehouse management software to outsourced fulfillment as a service. Some notable customers include Universal Music Group and Canadian Tire.
About Riverwood
Riverwood Capital invests in high-growth companies in the technology and technology-enabled industries. Riverwood offers a unique combination of operational, strategic, technology, and financial insight to portfolio companies that typically need growth capital and expertise to scale on a global basis. The firm seeks to invest in established businesses with a proven technology and business model, and the proper fit in terms of culture and values. Riverwood has offices in Menlo Park, CA; New York, NY; and São Paulo, Brazil. For more information, please visit www.riverwoodcapital.com
Media Inquires: media@shiphero.com
Jun 30, 2021 | Best Practices, Blog, Fulfillment, Warehouse Operations
By: Aaron Rubin, Founder & CEO at ShipHero
Mis-picks in your company’s order fulfillment process: frivolous mistakes or detrimental problems on your warehouse floor? Well, considering that distribution centers lose an average of almost $585,000 a year because of mis-picks, it may not just be a harmless error after all.
To help your organization spot and fix errors in your pick-pack process, we’ll list the most common errors that lead to mis-picks, and give you solutions to avoid mis-picks in your warehouse.
What is the Pick-Pack Process?
The pick-pack process is defined as the process of collecting, or picking, ordered items from the inventory, and then packing these items for shipment to customers.
Warehouses are a busy place, with employees meandering from bin to bin and picking items, all while heavy machines move products to the right place at the right time. Of course, mistakes are bound to happen in such a hectic work environment, with an estimated 35% of facilities experiencing constant mis-pick rates of about 1% or more.
But any extra, unnecessary movement by an employee, in the case of a mis-pick, can jeopardize the flow of your whole operation and cost your business in the long run. The cost of the mis-pick (on average) is about $30 per incident.
If you want to increase your order fulfillment rate, accurately and efficiently picking ordered items is vital. An error at this first step can have detrimental downstream effects, cause shipping delays, and increase your shipping costs. Here are some common mistakes.
Common Mistakes in the Pick-Pack Process
Among all the possible mistakes in the end-to-end order fulfillment process, picking mistakes happen to be the most common. As a result, distribution centers lose an average of almost $390,000 a year due to mis-picks.
The severity of these errors can vary for your organization; for example, while an incorrectly picked item could be more detrimental to your customer’s trust, a mistaken additional item shipped along with the correct item impacts your margins.
Mis-picks are usually a result of minor errors made by warehouse workers, whether it’s from poor lighting, fatigue, or miscommunication. Here are some of the most common mistakes to avoid.
Picking the Incorrect Item from the Correct Location
In this scenario, the picker heads to the correct bin and grabs the item inside, but it’s not the correct item. This occurs due to a problem with the inventory replenishment process. As a result, the picker will have to find the correct item from somewhere else.
Substituting Incorrect Items
If your business is experiencing stock-outs of certain items, pickers may be unsure what to do when they cannot locate the exact item. Similarly, a picker may accidentally pick the wrong item due to unclear instructions or products that look the same.
Adding Incorrect Items
In the case of bulk orders, your picker might accidentally throw in one product too many, or maybe one wrong item altogether. While the customer might be enthused, this has the potential to impact your margins and inventory levels over time.
How to Fix Picking Mistakes
The scenarios above typically occur when warehouses are using a paper-based, pick-pack process, where pickers follow orders written/printed on physical paper. Some organizations are vastly reducing their error-rate by moving to a mobile device-based system.
Here are some ways to reduce these mistakes and keep your company warehousing running efficiently and smoothly.
Measurement is the First Step
To accurately understand the situation and measure any progress, you should start collecting the necessary data.
Set up KPIs (i.e., key performance indicators) to measure picking accuracy. We recommend setting the following KPIs to get the full picture on your order fulfillment capabilities.
Order Fulfillment and Accuracy
No one likes to receive an order that isn’t theirs. This KPI lets you know how many packages you’ve shipped that have successfully arrived at the appropriate destination. If the order fulfillment values start to dip, then you’ll need to consider the influence it can have on customer opinions about your business.
Order accuracy data will also let you know whether your 3PL delivery line needs to be improved. If you’re sitting on an unusually low percentage of accurate orders, then there may be line errors at your warehouse that you need to address.
Inventory Levels
Whether you have invested in warehousing solutions or store your own inventory, you need to know where your inventory levels stand on a day-to-day basis. Rely on inventory level KPIs to replenish your stock when necessary and to calculate your business’s average supply-to-demand ratio.
Order Volume
If you’re manufacturing products several months in advance, you need to know how much of your inventory goes out per month on average. Order volume KPIs calculate your sales by day, month, or quarter, depending on your needs. You can use year-out estimates to track the ebb and flow of your sales and to pre-produce inventory for each month.
Be sure to communicate your order fulfillment goals and progress, and reward your staff for any improvements made in certain fields.
Label Boxes Correctly
While this may sound like common sense, mislabeling boxes is a common mistake. Properly identifying and labeling items will help lower the risk of picking the wrong items.
With barcode scanning technology, your pickers can scan items into locations and optimally place the necessary signs, rack labels, and aisle markers to help pickers easily and quickly identify storage locations.
Use Collaborative Mobile Robots
Tired employees make more mistakes, so keeping them alert and rested is crucial to lowering picking mistakes. Collaborative mobile robots can help improve pick rates simply by reducing the need for your workers to walk unnecessarily.
Mobile robots can also help keep employees on task by effectively leading them to choose locations through optimized routes, as well as displaying ordered items and the quantities to pick.
Move From Paper-Based to Mobile-Based
Paper-based operations, while inexpensive and easy to set up, leave your company vulnerable to errors, product loss, and reduced order fulfillment rates.
That’s why more and more companies are transitioning to mobile-based processes. With small investments in mobile devices and the right warehouse management software, your organization unlocks the potential for warehouse staff to independently organize their pick/pack tasks, as well as scan products and bins at each step to minimize human error with built-in redundancies to double-check and triple-check their items.
Additionally, a software solution like ShipHero can directly integrate with e-commerce stores on Shopify, BigCommerce and more, so order information can be distributed right to the picking staff. Also, you can also monitor inventory levels in real-time and coordinate replenishment right when you run out.
Wrap It Up
Picking errors have the potential to drastically impact order fulfillment operations, leading to shipping delays, damaging your reputation, and hurting your bottom line. Developing a reliable and accurate pick, pack, and shipping process is vital to scaling your business, so consider investing in mobile-based picking processes, as well as the right software to drastically increase your order fulfillment rate.
That’s why more and more companies trust ShipHero WMS. Pick-packers can scan products at each step of the process with everyday mobile devices.
Schedule a meeting today with our experts to learn more about our WMS software built for ecommerce brands & 3PLs looking to run their best warehouse and how ShipHero works to ensure that organizations invest in the solutions that match their needs, to improve productivity, revenue, and success.
Click HERE to Schedule a Meeting Today
Aaron Rubin, Founder & CEO
ShipHero
About the author: Aaron Rubin the Founder & CEO of ShipHero. He is responsible for planning and executing the overall vision and strategy of the organization. Rubin’s greatest strengths are leadership, change management, strategic planning and a passion for progression. He is known for having his finger on the pulse of ShipHero’s major initiatives, his entrepreneurial spirit, and keen business acumen. His leadership of ShipHero is grounded in providing excellent customer service that drives improved business operations. His passion for ShipHero comes from the culture and his ability to have an impact on the lives of employees, customers, partners, and investors.
Follow Aaron on Twitter & LinkedIn.
Jul 16, 2021 | Best Practices, Blog, Warehouse Management Software
By: Maggie M. Barnett, Esq., COO at ShipHero
Involved procurement strategies are complex and too often ignored by top-level executives. Supplier relationship management (SRM), for example, is a powerful tool that businesses can use to help evaluate vendors and streamline processes to help create a more efficient and beneficial relationship.
A study by PwC showed that of companies that implemented SRM strategies, 50% mentioned more efficient processes as a significant benefit of the strategy, and over 40% cited inventory reduction, better customer satisfaction, and more sustainable processes and products.
One of the main concepts of SRM is to create better relationships with suppliers to enhance your workflow and working relationships. Rather than just working independently from your supplier entirely, you create a closer relationship that leads to improved reliability, trust, and efficiency. By developing these partnerships, you gain a competitive edge and create a more positive working environment for both parties.
What is supplier relationship management?
Supplier relationship management is the process of examining all suppliers’ performances and measurables to see how well they match your company’s goals while also coordinating strategies with these vendors to improve workflows and collaboration. Through professionally developed partnerships with your suppliers, innovation will flourish, and cooperative, streamlined processes will save time and money for both companies.
The importance of a supplier relationship management
Fostering improved relationships with your vendors not only can give you a competitive advantage but can prove to have significant cost savings for your company. By examining your supply chain and the suppliers within it, you can create better SRM strategies that will protect and advance your business through a handful of advantages.
Evaluate if suppliers are meeting performance expectations
Supplier management helps you carefully examine if your vendors are meeting procurement expectations. Upon looking at supplier data and KPIs, you may find that they are not meeting all initial goals. Taking a close look at these insights can help you find the best-performing suppliers that you should foster more intimate relationships with and those that may not be a good fit.
Find improvement opportunities with existing suppliers
Strong relationships with your suppliers are essential for collaboration and mutual growth. Looking at the current supplier strategies in place and finding ways to innovate your process with your distributor can help both businesses flourish. By finding areas where your KPIs aren’t quite hitting the mark, you can work together to improve and monitor those metrics.
Reduced costs
The resources required to set up new relationships and contracts with suppliers can be costly and complex. Through supply chain management, you can foster relationships with strategic suppliers to create long-term, mutually beneficial relationships that save both parties money.
Increased efficiency & quality control
Growing more high-quality partnerships with suppliers means that operations between companies become more streamlined and efficient. Through long-term relationships, your teams learn workflow tactics and new approaches to the procurement process that saves time while still ensuring quality production.
Stable pricing
As buyers work more closely with their suppliers and grow a positive relationship, disputes, and hostile negotiations become much less common. A happy working relationship is worth a lot to both companies, enough so that it can create stable pricing agreements as your company commits to continue bringing business to vendors without volatility.
Supplier consolidation
Through the process of SRM, you start examining supplier segmentation within your supply base to analyze better your interactions with individual vendors and those supplier capabilities. Within your supplier management process, you will see which suppliers you can consolidate down to and which may be less ideal import sources.
Prevent supply chain disruptions
Working closely with your manufacturers can help prevent issues if supply chain disruption events occur. With strong relationships and long-term protective strategies, you can ensure that you have a stocked inventory and your suppliers are prepared as best as possible for unexpected events.
Ways to improve supplier relationship management
Improving supplier relationships doesn’t have to be complicated. Here are some ways you can improve relationships with suppliers.
Value mapping
By examining value mapping such as vendor risk and revenue growth potential, you find truly what a supplier’s contribution will be to your supply chain. You protect your company when you look at the actual value of a supplier beyond just the product price the company hides behind.
Top-down approach
To ensure SRM best practices across the company, getting buy-in from stakeholders and top-tier executives is essential. Like with customer relationship management (CRM), business leaders can easily undermine the entire process without a total company commitment.
Spend optimization
When looking at your SRM strategy, make sure you are critically examining cost savings and cost modeling. Through value mapping and supplier analysis, you can find ways to optimize your company’s spending better, ultimately improving its bottom line.
Risk mitigation
Suppliers can be a considerable risk for a company if you don’t do the proper research into their previous work and expertise. Ask for references, and examine their financial performance, especially in comparison to competitors and their pricing. A wholesaler with the lowest price may seem attractive, but paying a bit more for more reliable service is a big deal for the strength of your supply chain.
Positive ROI
Proving the ROI of SRM processes can get buy-in from the C-suite and stakeholders. Through case studies, value mapping, and risk assessment, demonstrate and continue to back the positive ROI that these processes can bring to your company.
Technology makes supplier relationship management simple
SRM software helps communications with vendors and helps streamline and add visibility to crucial processes like invoicing, payments, approvals, and collaboration. By empowering your team with technology and software, you can take a lot of the risk out of these processes and ensure that supplier processes run smoothly and on schedule as much as possible while being transparent and gathering vital data.
Make timely payments
Just like you want your goods or services on time, suppliers rely on being paid promptly. If something goes wrong and payment will be late, communicate directly and openly with the supplier as soon as you know of the issue.
Implement a supplier information management (SIM) system
Keeping all of your supplier data tracked accurately can be overwhelming, which is where a SIM system comes in handy. All of the information you may need about a supplier, such as contact details or transaction data, is stored and managed within your SIM system. Creating an accessible and visible way to collect this data makes SRM easier and more effective overall.
How to evaluate supplier performance
Not sure if your current suppliers are meeting their requirements? Here are some ways you can evaluate their performance.
Check if SLAs are met
Continuously evaluate missed deliverables and incomplete orders. Make sure that products or services received are of the quality expected on a continuous basis. Ensuring SLAs are met is crucial to supplier performance.
Create a supplier scorecard
Supplier scorecards can be favorable for both the vendor and your evaluation methods. By setting transparent goals for your suppliers, you both will know what you are working towards and the pain points of the process.
Use benchmarks
When deciding how you will benchmark your suppliers, consider what your goals are from your supplier scorecard or other value strategies. Having measurables to look at for suppliers won’t always give a complete picture but can help point out prominent trends, strengths, and weaknesses in your supplier process.
Review & update supplier contracts as needed
You and your supplier’s needs and capabilities will most likely change over time. Rather than be resistant to change, review and update your contracts with your suppliers as situations shift for either party. Instead of keeping unhealthy expectations, morph these agreements to best fit needs across the board.
Conclusion
Supplier relationship management is crucial for a company looking to improve its bottom line and develop its procurement process. Creating solid and long-term relationships with valuable, low-risk suppliers can create a stable and reliable supply chain that will continue to fuel your company for years to come. Developing these partnerships can not only protect your company from future supply chain disruption but from having to create new, costly contracts with potentially high-risk suppliers.
If you’re new to ShipHero Fulfillment, please schedule a meeting today with our experts to learn more about how we can help you get your orders picked, packed, and delivered with our fulfillment service. No setup fees – simply pay as you go. ShipHero works to ensure that organizations invest in the solutions that match their needs, to improve productivity, revenue, and success.
Click HERE to Schedule a Meeting Today
Maggie M. Barnett, Esq., COO
ShipHero
About the author: Maggie M. Barnett, Esq., is the COO of ShipHero. She is responsible for planning and executing the overall operational, legal, managerial and administrative procedures, reporting structures and operational controls of the organization. Barnett’s greatest strengths are leadership, risk mitigation, change management and a passion for business transformation. She is known for her expertise in delivering operational excellence and an ability to provide guidance and mitigating risk. Her leadership of ShipHero is grounded in a servant mentality, always doing the right thing for our stakeholders. Her passion for ShipHero comes from the ability to drive operational excellence throughout the organization impacting the lives of our employees, customers, and partners.
Follow Maggie on Twitter & LinkedIn.
Jul 23, 2021 | 3PL Warehouse Management, Blog, Fulfillment, Warehouse Management Software, Warehouse Operations
Supply chain risks are a constant concern for many companies, and recent events have caused significant disruptions worth examining. Whether the blocking of the Suez Canal by a jammed ship, the unprecedented pandemic of COVID-19, or massive cybersecurity attacks, recent events have reminded us of how vital supply chain risk management really is.
Manufacturing facilities, governments, and shipping companies have worked tirelessly to try and address sick employees, late shipping arrivals, and other complex problems that have caused wide-scale interruptions. Despite this, the Interos Annual Global Supply Chain Report found that global chain disruptions such as these cost large companies an average of $184 million a year.
We usually assume that large-scale disruptions in the supply chain are due to natural disasters such as hurricanes, tsunamis, floods, storms, and earthquakes. 2020 and 2021 reminded us that our scope must be broader when considering risk management strategies.
Risk assessment must be more robust to include any number of external risks, whether pandemics, socio political issues, or climate change. Supply chain managers can gain valuable insights by examining analytics related to the COVID-19 supply chain disruption and understanding what steps could have prevented vulnerabilities and failures.
How COVID-19 has affected supply chains
COVID-19 has created unprecedented disruptions up and down manufacturing supply chains and production facilities. The illness of personnel, new safety regulations, and procurement problems have caused significant delays. When considering the risk mitigation strategies used and how the pandemic has affected supply, there are a handful of components to consider:
Financial risks
The pandemic caused companies to go into panic mode over financial damage mitigation. Not only were companies attempting to protect their businesses from financial risks by shifting their suppliers and practices, but other pieces of the supply chain were affected by poor financial situations as well. In worst-case scenarios, parts of the supply chain were broken entirely by asset freezes or bankruptcies.
Socio political issues
Trade wars, tariffs, and Europe’s Brexit all were causing issues simultaneously as COVID-19 was occurring. Some of these issues were exaggerated by the pandemic and poor global relationships, while other elements were in play before COVID-19. These trade issues caused logistical nightmares, supply risks, and slowed the flow of products. For example, the US tariffs on Chinese-made healthcare products and PPE caused immediate demand risks going into COVID-19.
Unpredictable human behavior risk
Panic-buying during the pandemic reared its head in a way that the market hasn’t seen in a long time. In March 2020, the online sales of toilet paper rose 207%, while the online sales of hand sanitizer and wipes grew 5678%. In stores around the country, the meager couple of weeks inventory usually kept in stock was undoubtedly not enough for customer demand.
Raw material shortages
During the beginning of the pandemic, many raw material manufacturers saw declines in demand and had to ramp down to reduce their risk exposure. Lower supply meant prices grew, and raw materials such as microchips became increasingly challenging to acquire. Material shortages hit specific markets very hard, such as the technology and automotive sectors. We continue even a year later to see issues in this area with things like wood.
Safety recalls
Food packing safety was a huge focus during the COVID-19 pandemic, with multiple meatpacking facilities having to shutter entirely due to outbreaks. On top of illness issues, reputational risk was on the line as it was unknown if the virus spread through food sources. Beyond food, the logistics of quality issues during the pandemic were a nightmare, as car manufacturers and other companies struggled to get information to consumers.
Economic uncertainty
According to a McKinsey & Company study, economic uncertainty was at its highest level in 35 years during COVID-19. As over 110 million people lost their jobs during the pandemic, people were scared for their financial security and safety. Luxury items and other sectors saw dramatic dips in purchasing as many people decided to save money in case they were laid off or got ill.
Demand change
The demand for certain products and services changed the moment that lockdown occurred. Most obviously, the events and restaurant industry hit a stand-still as they attempted to find ways to adapt to dramatically decreased businesses. As the pandemic raged on, many companies in these sectors closed, while others that targeted remote workers thrived.
Staffing & resource challenges
Illness, financial insecurity, and layoffs led to significant staffing issues for companies. Many businesses had to cut as many workers as possible while still staying operational. Some industries, such as fast food, saw workers quitting due to working conditions and new opportunities.
Compliance risks
COVID-19 brought new compliance standards for companies to uphold. Offices needed to keep employees 6 feet apart, something nearly impossible in specific layouts. PPE and proper cleaning were required, while simultaneously supply chain issues were making these items hard to acquire.
How businesses can adapt to a post-pandemic world
COVID-19 showed us how the supply chain could easily fall out of place due to several different issues. Luckily, there are ways your company can become resilient against external and internal supply chain risks. Through robust planning and a risk-mitigation mindset, you can ensure your company will be able to better roll with any supply chain-related punches.
Educate employees on COVID-19 symptoms and prevention
While the pandemic is slowing due to the rollout of vaccines, it isn’t entirely over. It is crucial to figure out how to best disseminate information to your employees regarding COVID-19 prevention and mitigation with variants still prominent. By implementing a tactic for keeping employees informed directly and consistently, you can also create a lifeline for future communications emergencies.
Reinforce screening protocols
Having screening protocols in place can prevent the office-wide spread of disease. Whether temperature check-ins when entering the office or at-home daily monitoring, creating robust screening protocols is the first defense against disease. By protecting against an outbreak issue before it occurs, you can save your company from a large-scale employee illness problem.
Prepare for increased absenteeism
In the case that screening fails to catch a sick employee, it is vital to prepare for the possibility of increased absenteeism. If much of your workforce is ill, what steps could you take to protect your company’s bottom line? Consider how to create safeguards so that these employees will get the time away they need in case of illness while not putting the company’s financial wellbeing in danger.
Restrict non-essential travel and promote flexible working arrangements
Non-essential travel can be a vector for COVID-19 spread and an unnecessary drain on company resources. Discontinue unneeded company-related travel, and encourage employees to stay home while the outbreak subsides. Zoom and Teams have become mainstream during the pandemic, making remote working and remote meetings more viable.
Allowing employees to remote work rather than traveling to conferences or even traveling into the office can often protect them and your teams from illness while also making your teams infinitely more flexible to other unexpected risks.
Align IT systems and support to evolving work requirements
For remote and flexible work options to be successful, your IT team must facilitate safety precautions, best practices, and software options for employees to use. Encourage your technology team to find more ways to support flexible work within your different business teams. Use new rollouts and practices as a learning opportunity to discover more ways to create robust systems that can change on the fly in case of a future emergency.
Prepare succession plans for key executive positions
While grim, it is crucial to have succession plants for your top-level positions, especially during a deadly pandemic. Having lines of succession in place before needing to pull from them can prevent significant issues internally while scrambling to make a replacement decision. Making succession plans for critical positions is a great idea not only during COVID-19 but to prevent problems anytime due to sudden loss of staff.
Focus on cash flow
Create robust and multi-layered plants to protect your company’s cash flow in the case of multiple supply chain risks, pandemic-related problems, or other emergencies. Ways to protect your cash flow include keeping extra buffer inventory in the case of a supply chain disruption or creating redundancies within your workplace for unexpected absences. By ensuring that your cash flow won’t dry up, you can protect both your business and your employee’s livelihoods.
Evaluate alternative outbound logistics options and secure capacity
If outbound logistics and supply become disrupted, it is essential to have other options in place. Whether a third-party logistics company or a robust list of alternative supply options, having backups in place can help you navigate supply uncertainty. Along with this, securing more inventory capacity can help your company have more time to execute your backup plans.
Conduct global scenario planning
There are an endless amount of global disasters that may occur and disrupt your supply chain. While it is unrealistic to think that you will protect your company against all possible emergency scenarios, you can become more flexible to disaster by considering various global problems. From sociopolitical issues to natural disasters, coming up with backup plans for different cases can help your company better adapt to any international crisis.
Conclusion
COVID-19 has provided us with experience and knowledge to help us tackle future global supply chain disasters. While navigating the pandemic has been challenging for many, our companies have become more resilient and strong as we have found ways to overcome these hurdles.
As the dust is slowly settling, it is crucial to continue the momentum and create robust plans for your company in case of future global events. By planning and coming up with playbooks, you can make your company more flexible in the face of complex challenges and also make your employees feel more safe and secure with your capabilities.
If you’re new to ShipHero Fulfillment, please schedule a meeting today with our experts to learn more about how we can help you get your orders picked, packed, and delivered with our fulfillment service. No setup fees – simply pay as you go. ShipHero works to ensure that organizations invest in the solutions that match their needs, to improve productivity, revenue, and success.
Click HERE to Schedule a Meeting Today
Maggie M. Barnett, Esq., COO
Jul 30, 2021 | Blog, Fulfillment, Warehouse Management Software
By: Aaron Rubin, Founder & CEO at ShipHero
While seeing into the future of your supply chain may be impossible, predicting what may happen can be estimated by looking at the past. When a company wants to know how their finances, supply chain, and marketing may perform in the future, they often examine how things went in previous years.
Historical business data can help you successfully estimate things like seasonal trends and product success. One of the processes for looking at this data in the supply chain world is called demand forecasting.
What is demand forecasting?
Demand forecasting is the practice of looking at a company’s historical data for things such as finances, marketing, and supply to understand likely future trends. Demand forecasting methods end up within one of three categories, either qualitative forecasting, time-series analysis, or casual models. Forecasting can include looking at different lengths of time, using statistical methods, or looking at external influences on your future business.
Importance of demand forecasting for ecommerce
Businesses use forecasting in many ways to help gain an advantage over the competition. From inventory and supply chain management to cash flow and spend, there are many areas where you can use demand forecasting within your planning.
Preparing your budget
When preparing your budget, demand forecasting helps you get a glimpse into your company’s needs during an upcoming season or year. By knowing positive (and negative) trends, your business is better able to reduce risk and plan through data-backed decision-making. Whether it be inventory needs, staffing, or cash flow, you will be able to estimate your budget more accurately when forecasting.
For example, in the ecommerce industry, the holiday shopping season is one of the busiest times of the year. Ecommerce merchants use past holiday shopping data to forecast how much inventory they’ll need for the holiday season.
Planning and scheduling production
One area that demand forecasting is extremely useful for is production management. Through analysis of your past seasonal demand, your company can better prepare for needed production before running out. Ramping up production only when needed means customers get items when they want them, and you don’t have to put in guesswork and waste money by overproducing.
Storing inventory
Warehouse stock needs can be hard to predict, which is why demand forecasting for inventory can help identify your future needs. Looking at inventory needs of the past and rising or falling demand trends, you can better gauge how much stock you will need throughout the year. Like production, having enough to continue providing services and goods is necessary, while having too much inventory can cost you unnecessary storage fees.
Developing a pricing strategy
External and internal forecasting are two of the many ways to garner insight into the market and potential areas of business growth. Looking at the competition and trends in the historical market, you can better price your items advantageously in relation to rising and falling trends.
The types of demand forecasting
There are different types of demand forecasting methods, all using unique forecasting techniques and statistical methods to examine potential future demand. Understanding which demand forecasting you should use is vital to gauge possible trends and future customer demand accurately.
Passive demand forecasting
Passive forecasting is the most straightforward when looking for a basic, non-nuanced prediction. In this type of forecasting, you look at historical data from your sales in the past to estimate future sales. Unfortunately, this model doesn’t take into account variables, such as retailers that will have seasonal fluctuations. Passive forecasting models often can only be accurately used for analytics with businesses that are highly steady in sales and have robust historical sales data.
Active demand forecasting
The active demand model is most commonly used for businesses that are either very new or have aggressive growth within their marketing campaigns. Because your company may not have the past sales data to have accurate demand forecasts, active forecasting often looks at other resources such as market research, economic data, and supply chain management data.
Short-term projections
In the short-term forecast method, insights such as seasonal demand, cyclical patterns, and other similar anomalies are included in the trend projection, making this a great way to examine your inventory management and supply chain. You can also use short-term forecasts to think about new products and their performance. The time span that the short-term method looks at is from three to 12 months.
Long-term projections
Compared to short-term projections, long-term forecasting looks quite a bit further out from one to four years into the future. Rather than thinking about recent data sets and sales trends, future projections look at long-term demand, potential business decisions, business growth planning, and marketing planning.
External macro forecasting
When examining your company’s goals, sometimes you will want to look at how outside forces may affect your forecast accuracy and sales channels. Whether you look at competitor and market trends or other outside factors, external macro forecasting can help you look at some complex factors that may affect your goals. Using external forecasting is excellent if you have concerns about your supply chain, are thinking about expansion, or are concerned about risk mitigation.
Internal business forecasting
If you are looking to create accurate forecasts on your internal operations, such as your sales, a specific product, or a manufacturing division, internal business forecasting is ideal. Internal forecasting is excellent if you need an expert opinion on how things such as your warehouse distribution, purchases, cash flow, or profit margins are trending.
How your ecommerce business benefits from demand forecasting
Examining your current trends and predicting future possibilities makes demand forecasting important for any company. Even just using the most straightforward methods can help a company of any size gain insight into how to follow their goals and which goals to set.
Reveal seasonal trends
Using methods such as short-term forecasting, you can closely examine seasonal trends around your products. By predicting and understanding your customer demand spikes, you can better know how to handle your supply chain and inventory needs. Knowing your seasonal trends can also reveal markets and niches you have yet to tap into during your slower months.
Rationalize your cash flow
Examining your past cash flow and comparing it to future predictions can help you better understand where your cash flow is going and how much you will have to invest in the future. Having a better understanding of your potential financial health in the future can help you make crucial decisions and goals.
Plan your supply chain
Looking at demand trends, especially seasonal spikes, can help you better plan your supply chain needs. Rather than running out of inventory during your peak seasons, you can invest in more from your suppliers before these higher-demand periods. Knowing when your lulls are in demand for certain products, you can better plan your marketing strategy and only stock as much inventory as is needed during these periods.
Understand how outside factors will influence your sales
External macro forecasting gives you an in-depth look at how outside factors can influence your product performance, sales, marketing, and supply chain. As you understand how different risks may harm your suppliers, products, or business, you can appropriately prepare for changes in external markets to better protect your company. Looking at outside influences can also help your company become more flexible and robust to react to these changes and take advantage of them quicker.
Prepare for the future
Predictions are a great way to gather data about potential future trends for your company. From threats that you need to prepare for to new markets you should break into, forecasts can help your company make big moves for the future. Whether changing your marketing strategies or reinforcing your supply chain, different forecasts will help you make decisions across your business to bring future success.
Make demand forecasting easy with ShipHero
ShipHero makes demand forecasting simple, helping you easily gain insight into fulfillment operations, products, shipments, and returns. Our data reporting helps you see everything going on in your warehouse operations to help you make educated and data-backed decisions.
We facilitate day-to-day actionable reporting to help keep your team organized while streamlining the process, actionable shipping reporting, and individual team member stats. ShipHero tracks:
- How quickly products are selling
- Which items are slow-moving
- How many days of inventory you have until you are expected to run out (based on SKU velocity)
- Where your customers are and where you’re shipping from (with the ability to compare current and ideal distribution)
- Profitability by order, how much you are spending on shipping, and the average order amount that customers are spending at your store
- Daily order status and performance
- How your current demand compares to previous time periods
- How your sales are affected by different seasons and months
- A breakdown of transit times and average cart value by shipping method (to see which shipping methods are most attractive to your customers)
- How much your customers are spending by shipping method (to help you test different pricing strategies)
- How much inventory you were holding at any ShipHero fulfillment centers at any point in the past
- Your best selling items and the percentage of your business they account for (and how they are performing compared to other periods)
- How many orders are held up, where they are located, and which items are driving a backlog (so you can prioritize the replenishment of stock that are affecting sales)
Conclusion
Demand forecasting and data analysis help your company make big decisions to give you an edge over the competition. From inventory analysis to marketing initiatives, your company will be able to reduce risks for new endeavors and make profitable decisions. Programs like ShipHero can help.
Schedule a meeting today with our experts to learn more about our WMS software built for ecommerce brands & 3PLs looking to run their best warehouse and how ShipHero works to ensure that organizations invest in the solutions that match their needs, to improve productivity, revenue, and success.
Click HERE to Schedule a Meeting Today
Aaron Rubin, Founder & CEO
ShipHero
About the author: Aaron Rubin is the Founder & CEO of ShipHero. He is responsible for planning and executing the overall vision and strategy of the organization. Rubin’s greatest strengths are leadership, change management, strategic planning and a passion for progression. He is known for having his finger on the pulse of ShipHero’s major initiatives, his entrepreneurial spirit, and keen business acumen. His leadership of ShipHero is grounded in providing excellent customer service that drives improved business operations. His passion for ShipHero comes from the culture and his ability to have an impact on the lives of employees, customers, partners, and investors.
Follow Aaron on Twitter & LinkedIn.
Aug 6, 2021 | Blog, Fulfillment, Warehouse Management Software
By: Aaron Rubin, Founder & CEO of ShipHero
Ecommerce websites are constantly shifting to keep up with buyer expectations. With competition from gigantic online stores such as Amazon, keeping up with ecommerce giants can be tricky. Luckily, there are a few key ecommerce trends that online retailers can look to in order to keep up with the wants of online shoppers.
With the rise of the ecommerce industry, more customers than ever are making purchases online. While brick-and-mortar retailers aren’t dead yet, many of them are seeing their customers flock to online stores. With a rise in ecommerce sales comes ecommerce trends.
Here are the 15 trends to keep in mind to help grow your ecommerce business.
AI helps improve ad campaigns and messaging
Top ecommerce stores are implementing AI and automation to help boost their ad campaigns and messaging across marketing initiatives and social media platforms. Through machine learning and artificial intelligence technology, companies have been able to make hyper-personalized advertising allowing for tailored messaging to customers. Specialized messages can include content specifically targeted at the user’s interests or product recommendations that fit their previous browsing history.
On top of being able to personalize messaging to specific users, AI can track the performance of these campaigns and let marketing leads know how each initiative is performing. By carefully examining you and your competitor’s marketing success, automation can pick out trends from the complex and time-consuming data, something hard for a human to discover manually.
The customer experience must be personalized
While AI is helping us customize our marketing experience for customers, we have to tailor the process from start to finish. For example, when searching through an online marketplace, users are more likely to purchase items they are interested in if they find them through sidebar suggestions based on their browsing habits throughout your site. Personalized product recommendations can help prevent cart abandoners and can help you sell more inventory too!
2-day shipping becomes the norm
Retail giants like Amazon have used their significant logistics network to ensure that 2-day shipping has become the new normal. Longer shipping times, though sometimes tolerated, are not going to be seen as the usual farther into the future. Finding shipping and logistics solutions to keep up with this 2-day expectation is difficult, but it is, unfortunately, a strong trend that will separate some sellers from their competitors. For ecommerce merchants that want to leverage 2-day shipping, consider working with a 3PL.
But customers will be hungry for 1-day and same-day shipping
Big ecommerce sites have made it possible for 1-day and same-day shipping, especially during the boom in online shopping during COVID-19. Customers can easily have food, snacks, household goods, or other products delivered to their homes overnight or even on the same day.
While many smaller companies have trouble keeping up with this high bar, many people have found the convenience of it even better than visiting a brick-and-mortar store to grab an item.
Chatbots improve shopping experiences
Chatbots, often powered by automation, can help guide customers through their shopping experience. By answering frequently asked questions or directing the customer to their desired page, chatbots can help users through any confusion or concerns without taxing your customer support staff. The answers are instant, customizable depending on your preference, and work on multiple devices.
Headless commerce drives innovation
Headless commerce, where the frontend and backend of your website are separated, can help you drive innovation on your site. The flexibility of being able to customize, brand, and play with your customer-facing front end while not harming the utilities within your backend lets companies make more considerable changes without stress or danger.
Separating your front and backend also helps improve customer experience by enhancing the website functionality and speed.
Subscriptions keep customers coming back
Subscriptions create a commitment, whether with SaaS in b2b, or monthly product boxes in b2c. Subscription models keep customers interested in your products and brand.
Even when your subscriptions aren’t your main product line, they can help buyers get connected and familiar with your messaging and quality, making them more likely to open their wallets when looking at your other product lines. Subscriptions are also a regular reminder that your business exists, keeping you at the forefront of a customer’s mind.
Customers want sustainability
With millennials taking up much of the ecommerce buying power, it is crucial to tap into things that often sway them. A Nielsen report has shown that 73% of millennials would pay more for sustainable products. Some examples of industries that benefit from this trend include upcycled products, consignment, and local p2p transactions. Tapping into these markets will require new initiatives and green product lines to appeal to these wants.
Mobile shopping is here to stay
Mobile devices have become more and more prominently used when shopping online, so much so that Insider Intelligence stated that mobile commerce would reach $488.0 billion (44% of ecommerce) by 2024. One-click shopping and easily accessible social commerce ads on apps have driven mobile shopping. In order to tap into the mCommerce market, it will be essential to make sure your website has mobile-friendly shopping or a mobile app.
Gen Z becomes more of a focus
The oldest of the Gen Z era are now in their early 20s, meaning they are quickly becoming more common customers within the ecommerce world. For a generation that has always known the conveniences of ecommerce and online ordering, a smooth customer experience will be vital. Gen Z is more partial to social commerce, meaning Facebook, Pinterest, TikTok, and Instagram are key places to garner their interest.
User-generated content remains key
Influencers have grown in popularity within marketing, especially when selling products through social media sites. Having a trusted celebrity or influencer tout your product can immediately get thousands of eyes on your business and markets much more directly to a group of consumers than SEO or content marketing.
TikTok and Instagram shopping become major sales channels
Both TikTok and Instagram are rising as major sales channels, especially with Gen Z starting to become a larger and larger part of the ecommerce market. Pew Research Center saw that 48% of United States adults between 18-29 years old use TikTok, a number that falls dramatically to 20% in the 30-49 age range. When marketing to younger consumers, both TikTok and Instagram will be a vital piece of the puzzle.
With Instagram and TikTok investing significantly in commerce capabilities, ordering directly from these apps is going to become much easier.
Brick-and-mortar retailers aren’t dead
Score saw that 55% of those who do online shopping prefer to buy from stores with a physical location rather than an online-only shop. Being able to do returns, try on clothes in the store, or see products in person is still valuable to consumers. You shouldn’t overlook the advantages of a brick-and-mortar location, especially in specific sectors such as apparel.
Buy Now Pay Later gains more traction
Buy Now Pay Later has become a wildly popular payment method for consumers. Services like Affirm, Sezzle, and Klarna make it easy for customers to make purchases on installment payments. Shopify has implemented the option natively with Shop Pay.
Apple Pay is launching a similar service. Having these installment-like payment options helps those without credit cards finance payments and creates accessibility for many shoppers. Having flexibility in payment systems also means that customers can make big-ticket item purchases that they may not have entertained otherwise.
The checkout experience must be easy and simple
Many platforms such as Shopify have made the checkout experience extremely smooth. Ensuring an easy and painless checkout can prevent cart abandonment and improve the crucial last parts of the customer experience. Poor checkout experiences are also more common on mobile devices, so make sure this process is simple across all of your platforms!
How ShipHero grows ecommerce businesses
Are you worried about keeping up with these ecommerce trends? ShipHero can help. Our software connects with your warehouse, outsourced shipping processes, and 3PLs to help you deliver your ecommerce. We help you elevate your experience through:
Fast shipping speeds
ShipHero offers standard, expedited, and overnight shipping so that you can keep up with top ecommerce retailers like Amazon and Walmart. We facilitate fast shipping without the hassle and frustration. ShipHero has no hidden fees, and we help you find the cheapest overnight options to save money.
Multi-channel fulfillment
Our software can help you handle your order fulfillment through a nationwide network of warehouses. By creating distributing processes throughout these warehouses, delivery delays are minimized, and orders arrive at your customers quicker. Multi-channel fulfillment allows us to offer overnight and 2-day shipping without the worry.
Easy returns management
Returns happen. When managed correctly, they can help you grow your sales and create repeat customers. Through built-in self-service options for your customers and easy label printing through connected shipping accounts, returns become simple for customers.
Conclusion
Keeping up with ecommerce trends is crucial to staying on top of the competition. From AI and chatbots to a heavier social commerce presence, adapting to the new normals can help you stay relevant and bring in new audiences. To give yourself an edge, implement technology and software such as ShipHero to help facilitate faster shipping and smoother fulfillment processes.
Schedule a meeting today with our experts to learn more about our WMS software built for ecommerce brands & 3PLs looking to run their best warehouse and how ShipHero works to ensure that organizations invest in the solutions that match their needs, to improve productivity, revenue, and success.
Click HERE to Schedule a Meeting Today
Aaron Rubin, Founder & CEO
ShipHero
About the author: Aaron Rubin is the Founder & CEO of ShipHero. He is responsible for planning and executing the overall vision and strategy of the organization. Rubin’s greatest strengths are leadership, change management, strategic planning and a passion for progression. He is known for having his finger on the pulse of ShipHero’s major initiatives, his entrepreneurial spirit, and keen business acumen. His leadership of ShipHero is grounded in providing excellent customer service that drives improved business operations. His passion for ShipHero comes from the culture and his ability to have an impact on the lives of employees, customers, partners, and investors.
Follow Aaron on Twitter & LinkedIn.
