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Rugged Devices For Order Fulfilment Operations
Order fulfilment is a unique way of explaining how customers get the product that they paid for. It is typically the final and most crucial stage of any sales process. A poorly planned fulfilment strategy could easily mean dissatisfied customers. In this article, we look at how rugged devices for order fulfilment can ultimately help your business.
Businesses might face a variety of order fulfilment-related difficulties, but the most common ones are those related to inventory management and the accuracy of business processes.
Challenges in Order Fulfilment
Order fulfilment, also known as inventory fulfilment, is the process of getting new orders and sending the goods to the end consumer. This entire process involves accepting the orders, warehousing, packing, and, finally, shipping the products. Ultimately, order fulfillment aims to accurately and efficiently deliver the products to the consumer on time.
Before, many ecommerce brands simply offered free shipping as their main order fulfilment strategy. Unfortunately, as more e-commerce stores have become available, offering free delivery is no longer enough. Customers’ expectations are much higher, and creating a real strategy will be helpful.
Inaccurately filled orders
When orders are filled incorrectly, the end result will typically be an upset customer or vendor. Inaccurately filled orders happen when orders are erroneously recorded. It can happen along different areas of order processing during the picking or packing phase. One of the best and easiest ways to avoid this problem is to start adopting barcoding technology.
A barcode scanner will save your team hours more than manually typing a code. Using a barcode system will also reduce picking errors because users get the accurate information in seconds. Barcoding your inventory management will make work quicker and easier.
In the time it takes your average person to type a couple letters or numbers manually, you can scan a single barcode containing numerous characters at once. That means barcoding your inventory will make inventory management much quicker and easier.
Conker rugged devices for order fulfilment is a perfect tool because it allows you to easily and quickly collect data through a built-in barcode scanner. Check out the top rugged devices with barcode scanners here.
Seasonal spikes and supply chain volatility
Ecommerce stores need to work around volatile supply chain systems. These unstable processes can be caused by seasonal spikes in demand, supply shortages, disruptions due to weather, COVID-19 restrictions, and many other factors. To solve this problem, your order fulfilment business must be prepared with the suitable capacity, inventory, visibility, and agility.
Seasonal peak times, such as holidays, raise the stakes even more. Compared to regular times, order fulfilment is enhanced during these demanding periods. Your team can use a system and various tools to help analyse and predict these peak times. Make sure to build strong working relationships with suppliers and delivery services as their help can be very valuable during peak season.
Optimising your inventory management can also be a great solution to this problem. This allows your teams to predict stocks efficiently. Using the right devices will help your team improve inventory management. Rugged devices for order fulfilment with a barcode scanner is an excellent solution. This gives users the ability to collect, save, and send data using a single robust device.
Order processing and packing times
Delivering orders to consumers on time and reliably is the heart of any successful order fulfilment business.
To do this, it is important to minimise order processing and packing times. Most e-commerce stores put in place about 2 – 3 days order processing and packing times window. So as a fulfilment business, you must be able to meet this demand. After all, you want to avoid making your customers wait.
Lack of usable data
Order fulfilment businesses understand that having the right data and using this to automate inventory management is crucial. A report by McKinsey shares that within the supply chain management industry, early adopters of artificial intelligence improve logistics costs by 15%, inventory levels by 35%, and service levels by 65%, versus slower-moving competitors.
Human error can cause catastrophic issues with any part of the fulfilment process. By automating processes, your team will be able to avoid these problems. Collecting data and analysing it to your advantage helps ensure that you make informed decisions about your operations. This is another area of your order fulfilment business where a rugged device could play a crucial role.
Improve Last Mile Delivery
Last-mile delivery is the transportation of goods from a warehouse or distribution hub to the customer (which is also the final delivery destination). The goal of last-mile delivery is to deliver the goods as quickly, affordably, and accurately as possible.
In our previous blogs, we shared why last-mile delivery can be the most challenging part of any supply chain process. Last-mile delivery remains to be the most expensive part of retail logistics. Nonetheless, it has the most visible impact on the customer journey and consumer satisfaction.
Understanding your order fulfilment business’s challenges will help you find the best solutions. Overcoming these challenges will streamline how you deliver your services and keep customers happy as a result.