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Your Guide to Efficient Warehouse Operation Management
01/06/2021

On-demand shipping has increased significantly in the last couple of years. As online shopping is gaining more popularity, it has become crucial for businesses to ensure timely deliveries to their customers. Usually, the orders are dispatched and delivered on the same day or it takes two days. However, the customers have high expectations regarding the receiving of their orders.

Having a fulfillment warehouse has become equally important to deal with the customers’ demand so that they can get their products as soon as possible. For any business, having an efficient order fulfillment process could work wonders. You would see a guaranteed jump in your customers along with an organized warehouse.

To streamline the warehouse operations and the fulfillment processes, here are a few steps you should take to keep up with the market demands:

Order Tracking Facility to the Customers

Regardless of the fact whether your business is B2B or B2C, or an amalgamation of both, you have to deal with the customer demands. Nowadays, customers have become demanding, in terms of getting their orders. Even impatient to an extent. Dealing with such customers becomes a tiring task sometimes. Particularly, if there has been a delay.

Try implementing a system that lets your customers be in the know of their shipment status in real-time. All you have to do is provide them with a tracking number when you confirm their orders along with an estimated delivery date. You can even hire a developer to add the feature directly to your web store. This way, customers can track their parcels themselves and know their status. On the other hand, you can save time from answering calls and emails regarding delivery inquiries.

Hire a Sharp and Active Inventory Manager

This is of crucial importance. You need to have inventory management who is willing to handle the inventory and all that it entails. As said earlier, customers have become quite demanding. They expect a lot when they are shopping online. Especially, when it's on-demand shipping that you are offering. Your inventory management should be active and efficient.

So, while hiring a person for this job make sure to run a background check. Make sure that:

  • They have experience in eCommerce order fulfillment operations (inventory accuracy and management, using fulfillment software, and slotting optimization)
  • They know how things are run at the warehouse
  • They have the ability to hire competent people for his team

Realistic Goals for the Team

Fulfillment procedures require both physical and mental effort. It is tough to work on the floor as well. Your goal should be to make the processes easier for the workers and ensure efficiency. See that when you hire workers, they are reliable and fully understand their job responsibilities. You have to train them and then trust them to do the job right. They are the last people to see and check the products before they are dispatched to the customers.

Give them realistic goals that they can achieve. Give them competitive salaries and a good working environment. This tends to be motivating for the employees, and you would see for yourself to see this in their work quality.

Get a Smart Warehouse System

The best thing to boost up the order fulfillment process is adopting a smart warehouse system for your business. Robotic fulfillment technologies are becoming the norm nowadays. Implementing these practices shall speed up the manufacturing process and also remove the need of hiring an additional workforce.

Previously, one needed to have a lot of capital to shift to an automated warehouse system. Nowadays, advanced technologies and mobile collaborative robots have allowed businesses, both big and small, to adopt automation. Investing in automation tools confirms your company’s survival in these changing trends and expectations of the customer base.

Supply Chain Visibility

It goes without saying that the ecommerce industry has increased massively. The demands and trends are ever-changing in this field. It is essential to boost your supply chain visibility at every corner. You would need to utilize tools to track production, orders, and product shipments to get a better idea of what is benefiting or damaging your business processes.

Even if you think that you have taken care of everything, you might have missed something in your order fulfillment process. You need to keep a sharp eye to find out issues that can be easily fixed once spotted. That’s all you can do to ensure that everything runs well at your warehouse. As for orders and deliveries make sure you hire the best eCommerce delivery service in Dubai.