If you’re not already doing it, here’s hoping you never find yourself in the position where you have to drop ship your products directly to consumers.  It is a time consuming, detailed and often painful process with a great deal of pressure on profit margins.  Especially if you are selling through the large retailers and e-tailers.  But, if the 2017 industry trends are to be believed, you may very well find that you will need to adapt.

If you’re already drop shipping, you are aware of the problems:

• Consumer expectations are getting higher almost every day.  If they order something at 3:00am Saturday morning, they want to see an acknowledgement, tracking number and expected delivery date very quickly.  They also expect to receive that order in a few days at most.
• Marketplaces also have increasingly high expectations, and if you don’t meet those expectations there are financial penalties.  More and more, they want their suppliers to drop ship from their own warehouse rather than one of their fulfillment centers, provide acknowledgement, tracking number, ship it in three (3) days maximum, provide accurate invoicing and provide them with accurate item inventory updates.
• One of the highest expenses for any drop shipping business is labor.  It’s the wages you pay; plus having the correct number of employees on hand when you need them. Having more employees than orders to process can be costly and the other side of that is not having enough employees to process orders. 
• Product profitability can be severely impacted, especially if the retail cost is low.  You may be selling more but your profit margin may be very thin or even non-existent. 

Now, on the other hand, large shipments can be very profitable because it requires much less order processing labor to handle those high revenue orders.

So, as I said:  May you never have to drop ship!  But many of you already are.  The retail world is changing rapidly with on-line shopping by consumers growing by double digits each year.  Are you ready for an inevitable change?

OPAL bridges both worlds – container, truck load and LTL shipments, as well as giving you the capability to expand more and more into the drop ship business as available without the problems we just spoke of.  It gives you the ability to grow and adapt over time, easily.

Are you striving to achieve productivity gains to increase drop ship order profitability?  Are you currently avoiding drop shipping, but see the writing on the wall.  Before dismissing the possibilities, please contact OPAL – the ONLY Autonomous Order Processing solution – to see what it can do for your business.  Book your FREE Demo now.

Do you have a drop ship order processing team that works 24 hours a day, seven days a week for $800 a month?  Probably not, but this is what OPAL, an Autonomous Order Processing Solution gives you.  And, you do not need to have a one size fits all solution.  In fact:

• It adapts to your specific business rules and processes
• It works transparently with all of your retailers and e-tailers to exchange mandatory electronic information and create compliant Packing Slips
• It works transparently with your e-commerce shopping carts to process orders and communicate shipment tracking to your customers
• It works with your Accounting and Inventory System to create accurate invoices and decrement inventory without manual entry
• It works transparently with your primary shipping carriers such as USPS, FedEx, UPS, DHL, etc. without having to use 3^rd party software for shipping and labels or going to one of their portals.
• And, it works effectively with and optimizes your warehouse or 3PL. 

So, think about it for just a moment.  $800 a month ($9,600 a year) as opposed to $15,000-$20,000 per year plus overheads for one person to handle order processing.  And this one individual will not be processing your orders 24 hours per day, 365 days per year.  

If you add order volume to the equation, how many orders per month can one person really handle?  If it’s 1,000 then your labor cost per order is probably going to be at least $3,000 ($3.00+ per order) versus $.80 with OPAL ($800 divided by 1000 orders).  And, the more orders processed each month reduces this per order cost even more.

 Are you striving to achieve productivity gains to increase drop ship order profitability?  Before dismissing the possibilities, please contact OPAL – the ONLY Autonomous Order Processing solution – to see what it can do for your business. Book your FREE Demo now.

We’ve talked extensively in the past about the productivity gains and increased revenue potential through the use of Autonomous Order Processing, especially as it relates to the huge, positive impact it has on drop ship order profitability. 

But, many times, business owners are reluctant to even consider the potential cost to their business – so much so that they don’t even investigate it to see if it is viable.  And, sometimes if they do, they have serious sticker shock and dismiss the idea.  However, what’s often not considered is the very fast Return on Investment (ROI) that is achieved and how quickly that increased profitability and productivity comes to pass for your company. 

Yes, it’s not free.  An Autonomous Order Processing System is NOT a one size fits all solution and it needs to work with a lot of moving parts within your business, like:

•           It must adapt to your business rules and processes
•          It must work transparently with all of your retailers and e-tailers to exchange mandatory electronic information and create compliant Packing Slips
•          It must work transparently with your e-commerce shopping carts to process orders and communicate shipment tracking to your customers
•          It must work with your Accounting and Inventory System to create accurate invoices and decrement inventory without manual entry
•          It must work transparently with your primary shipping carriers such as USPS, FedEx, UPS, DHL, etc. without having to use 3^rd party software for shipping and labels or going to one of their portals.
•          And, it must work effectively with and optimize your warehouse or 3PL. 

So, for example, let’s say that you have to invest $10,000 to connect all of those moving parts discussed above.  Sounds like a lot doesn’t it, but you REALLY need to consider the following: 

1. I don’t know what your current per drop ship order processing cost is, but in my experience it runs at least $3 per order in labor cost.  At a run rate of around 1,000 orders that would be $3,000 per month.  With Autonomous Order Processing it would be $.80 or $800 per month.  A savings of $2,200 and an ROI in 4 to 5 months. 
2. Also, if you are growing, as I’m sure you are, and have the need to add personnel to manage the load at some point, Autonomous Order Processing eliminates the need to hire additional personnel.  A savings of $15,000-$20,000 plus overheads each year.  Once again, the cost of one additional hire more than covers your investment. 

Before you dismiss the possibilities out of hand, contact OPAL – the ONLY Autonomous Order Processing solution – to see what it can do for your business, while also paying for itself extremely quickly.  Book your FREE DEMO now. 

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