If you sell a product, pack it, and ship it in small quantities then you are a drop shipper. Unlike bulk LTL, truckload or container orders, drop shipping can be a complicated, time consuming process for not a lot of revenue per order and 20% of your orders can take as much as 80% of your time and resources.
The most profitable business model, of course, is Bulk Shipping. It requires less overhead to manage processing and the revenue on each order is much, much larger. However, for better or worse, drop shipping is the wave of the future. E-tailers like Wayfair, Overstock and countless others are placing enormous pressure on traditional brick and mortar retailers. Some of these, Walmart for example, are forcing their suppliers to become Drop Ship Vendors (DSV) and are expanding their e-Commerce capabilities. In fact, virtually all brick and mortar retailers are searching for ways to compete more effectively in the e-Commerce world.
Bulk shipping won’t ever disappear; however, drop shipping by you as a supplier will become more and more necessary.
With the right tool, though, you can simplify the impact on your business and make drop shipping highly profitable. Automation is the key when drop shipping and to reducing its overall business cost. For example: Do you pay for EDI services? Do you receive your orders automatically? Are pick lists, shipping labels and packing slips generated automatically for the warehouse without a bunch of 3rd party software applications needed? Is your inventory automatically updated and communicated to your retail marketplace? Are invoices automatically sent? Are tracking numbers automatically sent and shipments tracked?
Can your process do all of this and more in just 8 seconds per order, 24 hours a day, even if your business is closed? Probably not.
So how do you prepare? OPAL enables you to process all (drop ship and bulk) orders within one software platform, eliminating the need for most of the 3rd party applications you may be using. Additionally it enhances the investments you’ve made in your ERP or accounting software, automating order processing related activities. AND…most importantly, it removes 90%+ of the overhead cost of drop ship order processing and levels the playing field with bulk shipment order processing cost.