Prepare Your Order Fulfillment for the Rush this Holiday Season
by Chelsea Camper | Last Updated December 30, 2015As the Holiday Season starts warming up, your business should start preparing for an increase in orders and shipments. Your customers aren’t going to be very happy when you tell them they won’t get their order in time because you’ve run out of shipping labels or because your fulfillment process is slow.
Let’s look at some ways you can start preparing for the busy Holiday Season!
Stock Up On Shipping Labels
The first obvious step is to stock up on shipping label sheets. Since they’re blank, even if you don’t use all of your extra order you still have some left over for after the holiday rush is over.
Shipping label sheets are the cornerstone of your order fulfillment process; they can make or break it. A good shipping label sheet can help your fulfillment process to run smoothly and help your pickers and packers do their job as quickly and accurately as possible. By printing the packing list and shipping label on the same sheet, you can reduce shipping errors since the label stays with the order until it’s ready to be shipped.
Start Streamlining Your Order Fulfillment Process
If your order fulfillment process is complex or unorganized, it can result in incorrect orders and/or slow fulfillment. Your order fulfillment process must be as accurate, organized, and fast as possible.
Sometimes it just takes a little bit of reorganization, sometimes it takes a whole new program set up. You can start by simplifying your order fulfillment process. If you have unnecessary steps in your process, it’s best to get rid of them. Keep your process as smooth and agile as possible.
Get Your Order Fulfillment Process Working for You
There are some fulfillment processes that don’t work for you; you work for it. If your order fulfillment process is a cat, you’ll want to take a good long look at it to figure out how it can be turned into a dog.
Some of the easiest ways to tell if you’re working to hard for your order fulfillment process are:
- Manually inputting online order data
- Cutting out shipping labels from copy paper and then taping them on
- Fulfillment process is not flexible
- Customers are constantly complaining about your fulfillment time
If any of those apply to you, you might want to consider making some changes to your order fulfillment process before the Holiday Season gets here!
How are you preparing for this Holiday Season?
Check out our Streamline Your Order Fulfillment Series!
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