The Christmas season is already underway and people are beginning to shop in retail establishments for gifts to give their loved ones. As COVID-19 still persists in the midst of this season, those who are engaged in the business of express delivery services might need to anticipate the changes in demands.
Online shopping has become the norm now more than ever. If you’re involved in the warehousing and logistics sector, you might become overwhelmed with the situation, especially if you’re unprepared. Fortunately, there are a few ways by which this industry can meet an increase in customer demand. Continue reading to learn more.
Coordinate with the Warehouse
If you’re outsourcing your warehouse services, then it can be difficult to properly track packages a day in and out, due to the density of the shipping activity. Like many retailers, you might be thinking that you don’t have to become involved with these types of third-party services but this shouldn’t be the case.
Think about it. When a customer orders a product from your platform, they’re hoping that it arrives satisfactorily at their doorsteps. You might remove all responsibility on your end once the package has already been en route to the physical site of the warehouse.
Despite this, it’s still important to establish a clear and consistent mode of communication with the warehousing staff. In this way, you’ll be able to receive updates on the bulk of parcels that have been shipped to the facility. With improved visibility, you become more involved in a crucial phase in the supply chain.
Choose a Reliable Courier
On the other hand, if you’re not really relying on a warehouse service for the most part of your operations, you might need to look into how your products reach their final points of distribution — the customers.
The quality of your shipping processes is just as good as the courier services that you’ll hire. This is in large part due to the knowledge that they’ll be handling any parcel that will be moving out from your store or facility. A reliable courier service will always keep you up to speed on the status of each parcel. They’ll provide you with information such as potential disruptions, delivery delays, package status, and so on.
More than that, however, your courier service should also scale with your business as it grows. You need to hire someone that is flexible enough to accommodate seasonal or temporary disruptions that you’ll eventually have to learn how to manage.
Undergo Warehouse Maintenance
Your warehouse isn’t just a place where all your goods are stored — in fact, it’s a crucial element in defining just how well your supply chain operations will try to meet a surge in demand. Knowing this, you should never underestimate the importance of warehouse maintenance.
Assess your already-existing processes. Are there bottlenecks that need improving? For example, your picking processes may not really be equipped to handle an increased responsibility when it comes to your shipping operations. It’s likely that your picking staff might feel overwhelmed too, in the event that they may not be able to do their job as well as they would have, in the order fulfillment process.
In order to mitigate this problem, you need to subject your warehouse to a range of good maintenance practices. When there are any new changes that you’re planning to implement, invest in training your employees. Keep them in the loop around new strategies that you’re planning to introduce. Doing this might just be the key for you to greatly increase the productivity of your warehouse and avoid facing demand shocks.
Hire Seasonal Workforce
You may also want to consider hiring a seasonal workforce for a temporary shift to easily manage the increase in shipping demand. There are likely areas in your warehouse that are in need of more assistance. Your current staff may not really be willing to take on more work and might be more hesitant to increase the number of hours while they’re on duty.
Hiring a group of temporary employees might just be your best choice because they can fill in the gaps in the current status of your warehouse. You can distribute them across different stations/areas around the areas where they could work as pickers, forklift operators, inventory managers, material handles, office clerks, workers, and the like.
Key Takeaway
Meeting the challenges of your express delivery promise to your customers during surges in shipping demands might be daunting in the beginning. But as long as you’re following a variety of best supply chain practices, then you’ll be able to manage and handle the shipping processes.
You’d want to try and maintain your warehouse processes, hire a reliable courier service, communicate with your warehouse, or hire a seasonal workforce that can all meet the challenges of an increase in the volume of shipping activities. The best piece of advice is to practice them in combination with each other to achieve the most effective result.
