Tips for Managing Increased Customer Demand in the Warehouse

Post By admin

The rapidly changing landscape of retail and e-commerce presents a huge opportunity for distributors to reach more consumers. But the increased customer demand is also a major challenge for warehouses that now feel the pressure of meeting high volumes of order fulfillment and achieving faster deliveries to more locations.

The increase in consumer demand is real. Households are buying more and more of their goods online and expecting quicker shipments and better on-demand tracking. With retail and distribution giants like Amazon setting the bar extremely high with two-day shipping and an extensive supply, average warehouses are now expected to meet the same standards. Managing customer demand is overwhelming for warehouse managers who now have to adapt their practices and processes to fulfill more orders in less time. In this sense, managing increased demand is all about having better, more efficient processes that allow workers to get more orders ready in less time. If your warehouse or distribution center has noticed significantly increased supply and demand, then here some ideas for how to rise to the occasion successfully.


Jump To Sections:

1. Take Full Advantage of Warehouse Management Software

The fundamental way that all managers can meet the increased demand in the warehouse is by becoming exceptionally organized. And the best way to stay organized is with a comprehensive warehouse management software system (WMS) that accounts for every item of inventory as well as every order and its status within the supply chain. Warehouse management software systems keep track of your inventory, tell your workers where items are located, generate order details and prepare orders for shipping.

Warehouse management system benefits

With an increase in customer orders and every order presenting an opportunity for repeat business and capturing market share, warehouse managers can’t afford to lose track of goods. A WMS gives managers insight into virtually every business activity, including the flow of goods through the warehouse. These platforms also help you prepare for increased orders by sharing information on upcoming shipments being sent to the warehouse. With this information, you can plan for peak times of increased customer demand, such as holidays or other seasonal activities.

A WMS is your operational guidebook, providing you with data and intelligence you can use to make meaningful adjustments in your warehouse operations to meet consumer demand. With the information generated by your WMS, you can make decisions about when to bring on more staff to meet the influx of inventory and shipments. You’ll also be able to make decisions about your supply chain partners and whether or not you need additional third-party logistics services to help fulfill more orders faster to more locations. Ultimately, your WMS can help you meet increased consumer demand by reporting on the average time it takes for an order to be picked, packed, shipped and delivered. With this benchmark, you’ll know where improvements need to be made.

2. Divide Up Distribution

Depending on the size of your operation, it may be worth looking into having multiple, smaller distribution points, each with their own focus. Amazon, for example, has multiple classifications of warehouses and distribution centers based on the types of products they ship and the locations they ship to. This strategy has allowed them to respond in a faster and more nimble way to customer orders and makes their receiving process smoother.

Optimal Warehouse Location Planning

If it makes sense for your business, you might consider designating different warehouse centers for different types of goods. This strategy allows you to fully develop and perfect each kind of distribution system so that each warehouse becomes very good at its unique focus. This allows you to have a more realistic idea of what types of products can get to which customers when. You can then limit the amount of overpromising and underdelivering that happens when shipments take longer than the customer is told to expect.

Branching out from one warehouse to multiple distribution points may seem like a significant investment and cumbersome undertaking. But it doesn’t have to be. Today, innovative logistics services like Ware2Go from UPS can help match businesses with excess warehouse space in a variety of locations. There’s no shortage of excess warehouse space throughout the country. Even though consumer demand has increased, fulfillment processes have gotten much more streamlined, meaning, ideally, inventory doesn’t sit in warehouses for longer than necessary, incurring expensive carrying costs.

The speed at which warehouses can get inventory received and redistributed today is astonishing compared to even five years ago. For businesses that do require additional warehouse locations, on-demand warehousing can give them the support they need to strategically divide up distribution and get more orders processed faster with better inventory management in more convenient locations. With no sign of consumer demand slowing down, the multi-warehouse approach might be a good long-term strategy that will help your business continue to serve existing markets and branch into new ones.

3. Provide Real-Time Order Tracking

A significant factor in the increase in consumer demand is the fact that everything is available instantly, in real-time. With e-commerce, part of the customer experience is that after you’ve placed your order, you can track your shipment and see when it’s shipped, when it’s left the distribution center and when it’s out for delivery and on its way to your house. Customers want to be able to see, down to the minute, when their shipment will arrive so that they can plan to be there to receive it or know when to pick it up.

Offering your customers real-time tracking and notifications on shipment statuses is crucial in this ever-growing consumer marketplace. Your warehouse can provide customers with shipment notifications through warehouse management software that links the entire logistics team and their role in the supply chain. This includes your third-party delivery services, which are an integral component of the customer experience.

Why Offer Real-Time Customer Shipping Status

Real-time order tracking means that customers are much more involved in the supply chain process now than they ever were before. There’s now total transparency, and customers can see where mishaps occur. Ultimately, keeping customers informed on their shipment status is a positive experience that consumers appreciate, and seamless delivery is part of what drives repeat purchases.

4. Find the Right Supply Chain Partners

As mentioned before, your supply chain partners are an integral part of the customer experience, even more so now with the increased supply and demand in the retail sector. It’s critical to find supply chain partners that can help you fulfill the surge in orders as quickly as possible. Your third-party logistics partners (3PL) need to have robust distribution and transportation networks spread out across the country. Your chosen partners must be able to reliably transport packages to your customers’ homes and be experts in the local market. Depending on the extent of your retail model, you might need multiple 3PLs working in different areas within the regions you serve.

Partnering with the right supply chain service providers isn’t just about their location and speed. Your 3PL partners also need to have high fulfillment standards. How the customer receives their package is arguably the most significant part of the overall process — it can make or break the customer’s experience with you. Because customer experience is such a crucial aspect of e-commerce today, it’s critical to find a supply chain partner who will deliver the package to your customer’s doorstep in excellent condition. They need to reliably transport the package throughout the entire supply chain, taking care to preserve its condition. The package is the front-line interaction you have with your customer and is a great opportunity to remind your customers of your brand.

Choosing the Right 3PL Partners

5. Tighten Up Warehouse Processes

Getting orders picked, packed and shipped as quickly as possible is vital to delivering a good customer experience. Consumers expect a seamless ordering process, and they want to know that their order has been at least processed, if not shipped, within one business day of placing their order. This means that the entire warehouse needs to run efficiently and can’t afford breakdowns, bottlenecks or backlogs. To keep up with consumer demand, warehouses need to focus on the continual improvement of their internal processes. Here are some ways that warehouses can streamline their processes to get shipments out the door faster:

Improve Warehouse Efficiency
  • Designated shelving and bins: When receiving stock, every item should automatically be assigned a designated shelf or bin. Shelves and bins should be numbered and correspond with your warehouse management software so workers can quickly look up an item’s destination and retrieve it later for picking.
  • Faster order picking: Making it easier for workers to pick items faster is central to delivering on increased customer demand. You can speed up order picking by having workers pick items directly into shipping containers rather than bins, and by limiting the distance that workers have to travel to find goods. Today’s automation and robotics technology can make this much easier, as can having a well-designed and properly laid-out warehouse.
  • Comprehensive labeling: Much like every bin or shelf needs a number, every item needs a label. This allows goods to be easily identified and found within the warehouse. Comprehensive labeling also applies to shipments so that orders can be tracked throughout the supply chain. You can speed up the labeling process with high-speed labeling machines, which are another form of warehouse automation, to help meet increased demand.
  • Proper material handling equipment: To process a high volume of orders quickly, workers need the right tools to do their jobs. Having enough material handling equipment, like pallet trucks and carts, ensures that every worker can safely and efficiently perform standard tasks. Other equipment, like pallets, containers, bins and container tilters, keep inventory organized and easily pickable. By investing in the right material handling equipment, you can streamline your warehouse processes and respond more quickly to increased consumer demand.

6. Embrace the Modern Warehouse Approach

It’s estimated that the average age of a U.S. warehouse is 34 years old. When you consider the dramatic change our consumer landscape has undergone in the last three decades, it should come as no surprise that one of the most effective ways to respond to increased consumer demand is to rethink the conventional warehouse model. Older warehouses simply aren’t designed for the fast-paced environment of e-commerce distribution. They often don’t have the floor space, ceiling height or capacity to accommodate the influx of inventory and multiple supply chain partners that often come with today’s high volumes of shipments.

A modern or updated warehouse is strategically laid out, with a combination of thoughtful design, automation and high functionality. An efficient warehouse process starts with a good design, making sure that heavily accessed items are in the most central location and that workers don’t have to travel too far to pick orders. Modern warehouses tend to have a more open layout as well, which makes it easier to move and handle pallets and rearrange inventory based on demand.

Optimal Warehouse Layout and Organization

Another aspect of the modern warehouse is that it’s conducive to efficient inventory control. A warehouse catering to e-commerce markets will have multiple loading bays, for both shipping and receiving. Multiple loading bays allow you to accommodate more third-party logistics partners dropping off shipments and picking them up, so you can get more product in and out faster and in higher volumes.

Another aspect of the modern warehouse approach is its centralized location within urban areas. Making it as easy as possible for supply chain partners to fulfill your shipments is the only option that businesses have nowadays to compete in the e-commerce space. Things are moving faster and faster, and having a strategic warehouse location is becoming central to efficiently distributing goods to a wider range of people and businesses.

7. Consider Becoming a 24-Hour Operation

The increase in consumer demand is reshaping how warehouses operate. The traditional 40-hour workweek model may no longer be sufficient for many warehouses to keep pace with the growing marketplace. Because most e-commerce giants offer such fast delivery rates, and people are willing to pay for it, consumers have come to expect immediate results. In response, many operations have had to switch over to a 24/7 model, or something close to it.

Moving to a 24 hour business model

There may come a time when your warehouse will need to adjust scheduling to accommodate a more round-the-clock operation. Many warehouses start by moving to a seven-days-a-week model, followed by adding two to three shifts to each day. Eventually, if the demand calls for it, you may consider operating non-stop. Many third-party logistics providers already operate on a 24/7 model, making it easier to transition when you know you’ll have their support.

Becoming a 24-hour operation has its pros and cons. While your warehouse will certainly be able to process more orders in less time, there are also concerns about worker fatigue and the increased rate of incidents during overnight shifts. However, thanks to today’s technology and resources, typical warehouse work is much less labor-intensive than it was a decade ago, alleviating some of the risk of accidents. When looking for ways to respond to increased consumer demand, reviewing scheduling alternatives is a good place to start.

8. Develop Scalable Resources

Though consumer demand is certainly growing steadily, it’s still important to recognize patterns of peak sales and slow times. Because of the natural ebbs and flows of business, warehouses need to look at ways to make their practices scalable. Being able to ramp up quickly during busy times is key to responding to increased customer demand. However, your operation also needs to be able to scale down during slow times to remain profitable and avoid wasting resources.

Scalable Business Practices for Warehouses

There is one area in particular where warehouses can focus their attention and learn to become agile — human resources. Both in terms of workers and service partners, developing a scalable workforce and support system is key to responding to whatever the market delivers. For warehouse workers, it’s a wise idea to have an on-call system, allowing you to bring in employees whenever you receive large shipments from suppliers or an increase in orders. Another option is to partner with a temp agency, giving you access to an on-demand workforce that you can mobilize as needed.

As for your logistics partners, it’s crucial to know whether they have flexible transportation options that have the shipping capacity to accommodate busy periods. Additionally, when you do see a surge in business, it’s necessary to have additional storage space you can use as needed. Being able to access additional space on flexible terms will help you seamlessly transition between peak periods and slow times.

9. Capitalize on Slow Times

The consumer marketplace naturally fluctuates monthly and seasonally. During peak periods, such as the holidays, most warehouse managers are simply trying to keep pace and not fall behind on orders. However, when the bustle dies down, and your warehouse hits a slow time, it presents an excellent opportunity to get ahead before the next wave of activity.

As a warehouse manager, you can plan ahead for how you’ll handle another surge in inventory. You can begin to implement some of the tips in this guide, such as:

  • Invest in a warehouse management system that offers the features necessary for your unique business model
  • Source secondary and flexible warehouse spaces for the next peak period
  • Bring on the right supply chain partners that can help you reach more customers faster
  • Make changes to your warehouse to streamline and modernize operations
  • Develop a scalable human resources model so that you always have the support you need when you need it

During slow times, warehouses can work on fine-tuning their processes to further improve operations. Using key performance indicator data from your warehouse management system, you can uncover opportunities for improvement. By knowing what went right and what went wrong, you can make informed decisions about where to go next. It’s this mindset of continuous improvement that allows warehouses to manage increased demand year-round and remain profitable.

Meet Consumer Demand With Cherry’s Material Handling

In this fast-paced world of increased demand, faster shipping and more direct-to-consumer sales, warehouses must be adaptable to compete. Warehouses can capitalize on this increased demand by implementing smart, scalable practices and bringing in the right support from trusted partners.

Cherry’s Material-Handling.com is your trusted partner for all your material handling needs. With the right equipment, warehouse workers can handle material more quickly, safely and efficiently, allowing you to develop a streamlined operation that meets increased customer demand. For high-quality products, fair pricing and outstanding customer service, choose Cherry’s Material Handling for all the material handling equipment you need. Whether you need ergonomic lift tables for more functional workstations, containers and pallets for better inventory storage solutions or pallet trucks and carts for fast and safe material handling, Cherry’s Material-Handling.com is your one-stop source for all your warehouse products and supplies.

Contact a Cherry’s representative today to learn more about the right solutions for meeting increased demand in the warehouse. Call us today at 1-877-350-2729 or contact us online.

How to Meet Consumer Demand - Contact Us Today
All Post