A recent Washington Post headline just stated: ‘Retail apocalypse’ now: Analysts say 75,000 more U.S. stores could be doomed”.  ”Widespread closures have roiled the retail industry, but many more stores are likely to shut down in coming years to keep up with a shift...

If you are handling 50+ orders a day, selling to multiple sales channels such as  Amazon, Target, Home Depot, Walmart, Wayfair, e-Commerce sites, etcetera , creating packing slips, creating shipping labels, creating customized pick lists, scanning orders, sending...

There are some pretty compelling reasons to be a drop ship vendor for one of the big (or small) retailers or e-tailers.  Things like the potential to have better margins, the ability to be nimble and react quickly to market demand, and a revenue steam that isn’t...

All companies large or small that sell product on-line or for warehouse fulfillment to retailers and e-tailers eventually find themselves in a position where they need to rely on EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) to communicate with them.  But does EDI really have a...

First thing in the morning:  Hello, my name is Joe. I am an order processing expert Hello, my name is Tracy. OPAL is my order processing expert   Joe: I’m logging into the portals for all my retailers and downloading the orders Tracy:  OPAL works 24x7 so all my orders...

We all know that having an accurate count of stock is critical.  But how accurate is the individual SKU count that we report to our Retailers?  This is a critical question.  If you have 10 of a specific SKU in stock and are reporting ALL 10 SKUs to ALL RETAILERS – it...

We all understand that efficiency in a warehouse operation relies almost entirely upon the time and motion of its personnel – the fewer steps while performing activities the better labor utilization you have, the more shipments you can make, and the less cost...

We’ve often spoken of the order processing cost associated with drop shipping and OPAL’s ability to do things that reduce that cost to less than $1 per order. But what about the cost of picking, packing and shipping by warehouse personnel?  90% of our customers did...

Now, really think about the difference for a minute.  My guess is that most everyone would say that they are “Automated”.  There’s probably an EDI service that downloads Purchase Orders from the retailer into an Accounting System or ERP System, and it probably also...

EDI continues to be a significant part of a supplier’s life.  It’s mandated by many of your retailers or e-tailers, whether it be for drop shipping product directly to consumers or doing warehouse fulfillment.  However, over the last 20 years a major shift has opened...