Modern-day consumers expect a huge amount from e-commerce companies. The rise of next day delivery from services like Amazon Prime has put a tremendous amount of pressure on online companies to improve their fulfilment efficiency with next day delivery, but doing so whilst still providing a quality service can be a real challenge and especially for smaller companies starting out.
Fortunately, there are a few easy ways to improve efficiency to provide next day delivery fulfilment:
Improve Warehouse Efficiency
As the heart of your fulfilment process, one of the best ways to improve the speed of delivery is to assess your current warehouse operation to identify how it could be improved. In addition to small things like improving the layout and properly training employees, another way to guarantee next day delivery is to open up warehouses across the country so that there is always one relatively closely no matter where the order came from (this is obviously only a possibility for larger e-commerce companies).
Increase Inventory
If you are struggling to keep up with demand, consumers will soon turn to the competition if they can offer products that are in stock and available for delivery the next day. To avoid this, it is worth increasing your inventory for a smooth fulfilment process. In addition to this, always keep peak seasons and other times where there may be a surge in sales to keep up with demand.
Outsourcing
For many e-commerce companies, the best way to increase efficiency for next day delivery is to outsource their fulfilment process to a specialist like Whistl. Although it is an expense, it means that it is being handled by experts that know how to deliver an excellent experience from them first click right through to the final delivery. These companies can also be good business partners and help with packaging and shipping costs, as well as provide good contacts. One of the major benefits of outsourcing is that it enables you to focus your efforts on other areas to grow the business, such as digital marketing, customer service, accounting and other areas. There is big data software development that can also be outsourced as well.
Modern-day consumers now expect e-commerce companies to offer next day delivery and otherwise, they will find a merchant that can provide this. Next day delivery is an enormous challenge and especially for smaller operations, but there are a few ways that you can improve the efficiency of your fulfilment process to put you in a position to offer next day delivery.
