Fulfilment Survival Guide Planning for Success During Peak Periods

December is approaching quickly, it’ll be the biggest month of sales for companies worldwide. There are a lot of details in hand that need to take place in a warehouse to prepare for the upcoming seasonal events. Here we have our seasonal survival guide for warehouses and what we do here at MCF.

• Forecasting Sales – Understand your daily volumes and where will need more time allocated.
• Managing shifts/bank holidays – Schedule skeleton crews to prepare for the following despatch day.
• Dedicating teams – Plan out your teams for parts of your facility to fulfil all requirements for the busiest days.
• Preparing top sellers – Dedicate frequent stock checks for best selling items.
• Communication – IS KEY!
• Setting incentive – Let’s have some fun!

I will be going through these in depth further down the blog for further understanding of how we will be conducting our working days in Santa’s fulfilment Center! 🎅

Forecasting Sales

It is without surprise that since Covid-19 struck internationally, this season has been the prime time to shop online for gifts and gadgets galore while shop fronts become quiet. Companies start setting up planned promotions and reductions. The first step is to prepare your forecasting volumes, too many orders without the correct number of staff will result in under-resource and orders will overwhelm the facility, however, overestimating the orders and supplying too many workers will cause incorrect sourcing and leave little work and funding for the company.

As a point, this is where communication with the connecting businesses need to correlate a plan that needs to be as accurate as possible to prevent any underserviced areas within the warehouse. This additionally includes standards (keeping the work areas clean and organised), returns (to ensure customers are receiving timely refunds), inbound (for new stock to resupply any of the best sellers) and customer service (availability for customer needs and enquiries). We have gathered resources from our clients and roughly estimated our volume for the month, varying the quantities on different days (Black Friday, the weekdays before Christmas Day, Boxing Day, all Bank Holidays etc) and have given a presentation in preparation for this with our members of staff. This means we have already prepared our daily targets, what we expect for our rates and allocated shifts, which I will talk about next.

Managing shifts/bank holidays

A standard procedure for any warehouse is creating teams for any sudden influx in orders, flash sales or promotional offers. This is vital for seasonal occasions as well as bank holidays, which may surprise most. With orders increasing during holiday periods, it is vital that some preparation of orders take place to prevent any backlog and overwhelming targets. In this situation, we have set up rotating skeleton crews to handle around 30% of the orders which would typically fall on the following workday. The better the bank holidays are managed, the easier it will fall for the full team that will be due for the workday after and mean there is a more achievable goal for them.

Dedicating teams

With orders coming in various volumes between our clients, it is important that we portion the team members towards the correct quantities so to not underservice and fulfil clients who also tend to have peak ordering hours throughout the day. For example, the clients that do not operate under an Amazon store, the cut-off time for orders to drop into Mintsoft is 2pm, any Amazon have until 4pm to drop into ‘New’ for it to be picked, packed and processed for perfection! Naturally, the staff who handle orders outside of Amazon will be able to help out the rest of the team and also means they can be adapted to picking or packing with their flexibility depending on what area needs the most attention.

Preparing top sellers

The organisation needs to be set ahead of time with Black Friday sales, acknowledging which your best sellers will be is a must as well as the predictability of how many orders are likely to drop in, once these have been figured out you would be surprised just how much easier the flow can be!

Discussing with clients which items are receiving promotions and what are being given discounts will prioritize which need to be replenished more frequently than others. Currently we are selling over 500+ Bird Fat Balls a week, this is a common top seller with one of our clients out of all the other stock we store for them. Beneficial to keeping on top of these items, we forecast the orders around the end of the week that we will likely receive for them and ensure that replenishment tasks are occurring throughout the day so the flow of picking and packing does not slow down. Dedicated forklift drivers regenerate the tasks every hour to fulfil the replen requested of them and keep the orders moving. This means items, such as the fat balls, are despatched in a timely manners and not to mention it keeps the birds happy too!

Communication

This is the most important part of this plan and it is self-evident as to why. First is a collective discussion between clientele, what to expect for order volume, which days will be peak for orders, inbound to be planned ahead, which promotions and discounts for what items on their website. The list can go on. As the time approaches, there needs to be a time which goals and objectives will be discussed with the members of staff. The most concise the information is when receiving these from the clients then the clearer it can be made, targets can be accurately put in place for picking and packing and we can schedule shifts accordingly. The couriers also need a schedule laid out for them so as to not deviate from our ultimate goal, which is to provide the parcels on time to the customers.

As you can see, there are three key groups to communicate within this time frame, clients, couriers and staff members. One miscommunication within any of these areas can cause a storm, especially during the busiest season of the year. Clarification needs to be made across the board, it’s okay to ask for help or further explanation as it is vital that errors are prevented and can give additional assistance and training when necessary. These have been brought to our team leaders within our warehouse so that the supervisors to help keep an eye on the work flow.

Setting incentive

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, so without having to relive The Shining, it’s essential to set some time aside for the people who have dedicated their time to making sure the volumes go smoothly! While discussing your work objectives, informing the team that there will be an ultimate reward at the end of the rainbow that happens around this time of year.

It’s important to celebrate accomplishments and acknowledge the team for their hard work and outstanding efforts going towards the peak of the year this motivation can drive performance during peak periods.

There you have it, a fool-proof guide to maintaining a sturdy performance towards the Black Friday and Christmas period. Following these steps and basing your working days with these in mind will provide some peace of mind. Any further enquiries on our business or if you would like to know more about MCF, please get in touch with us!