As an e-trader, your goal is to delight your customers from the start to the end of their experience. We always think of optimizations to be made on its site, but the last point of contact between your brand and your customer is your package order. 

Here are some essential tips to optimize the preparation of your orders, step by step, and without reducing the quality of your service.

Know Your Capacities

Before putting anything in place, it is essential to know your own abilities. Go through previous records of the year or months. By analyzing the previous figures, you can organize your sales and the supply of objects from suppliers. Use this analysis to help you determine the current flagship products and their demand.

Also, keep in mind the critical dates on which the business volume increases during the year. Like, you must properly respond to weekend sales to avoid being overwhelmed on Monday. It helps to accumulate delays during the week.

Once all these factors have been taken into account, you can predict your logistical capacity. With this, you will have a fair idea for human resources and time required, and the packaging supplies to obtain. All and all, planning is an essential part of the success of your logistics management.

Organize Your Order Preparation Area

The danger during the preparation of orders is to multiply human errors, like reversing orders or sticking a label on the wrong package. This is why it is better not to rush. Instead, think about organizing to set up.

There are several tips to organize your order preparation space and minimize the risk of incidents:
  • Start from basic: To avoid manual errors, make use of PO making software. It can automate the whole process of purchase order generation. This software links with your cart and auto collects information for every order made. Then, it processes that information and creates a purchase order. You get notified of each purchase order creation. Not only this, but this tool also serves you as PO tracking software.
  • Dedicate space for order preparation: Be careful not to mix the steps of the composition of orders, preparation, or verification before the parcel leaves. Each action step requires space.
  • Use whatever is available around you to separate the different logistics flows: mark the floor with tape or move tables to create separate spaces.
  • Prepare Well: Place the necessary equipment (supplies, tools, etc.) on each space, so as not to waste time looking for it as you go.
  • Group orders in batches: By the transporter, by type of product or by the level of emergency, for example. It helps to go faster in processing each order and limit errors to improve your logistics transport.

Optimize The Storage System

Keeping control over your stock is essential for your e-commerce activity. To do this, quantifying and counting stocks in real-time is very useful. If you use a CMS, do not hesitate to look at the complementary applications which are proposed. Many functionalities will allow you to keep an eye on your stocks.

If you sell your products on several platforms (e-commerce site, marketplaces, price comparators, etc.), plan different storage areas according to your various sales channels.

Finally, do not forget to note in your inventory as soon as a product leaves your stock (and from which sales channel), or you may spend a long time updating the status of your commodities.

Finally, Facilitate The Preparation Of Your Orders

At this stage, the challenge is to choose the right object to associate it with the proper order. There are two ways to do this.

First of all, you can group the orders to be prepared by hand by distributing the items by arrangement.

Second, if you are equipped, you can carry out the composition of your orders using a scan which limits human errors a little more (but not entirely).

We also recommend working in pairs, to increase vigilance at all stages. Like person A can take care of the assembly while the verification is done by person B. Do not skimp on the audit at this critical stage, it reduces many errors that could harm you later.

To find out more such posts, keep yourself attentive to this blog.