Currently, much if not all, of your order processing may be in the fulfillment of bulk orders: LTL, truck load or container shipments. While not simple by any means, bulk shipment orders have high revenue values and can absorb a lot of order processing and handling costs and still be highly profitable. Unfortunately, as you begin drop ship order fulfillment, you find that much of those same costs that apply to bulk shipments now severely impact the profitability of low revenue, single package orders.
You receive an order, pick it, pack it and ship it to the consumer. That is simple drop shipping. Unfortunately, reality is never that simple. It’s actually a time consuming, detailed and often painful process with a great deal of pressure on profit margins. Especially if you are selling through large retailers and e-tailers; additionally, industry trends over the last five years indicate that there’s going to more drop shipping in the future, not less.
What’s needed is something that helps your team to continue managing those bulk shipments while even reducing some of those order processing costs, as well as making drop ship orders easy to handle and highly profitable, too.
OPAL is AUTONOMOUS and bridges both worlds – container, truck load and LTL shipments, as well as giving you the capability to efficiently and profitably drop ship orders. Take a look at this pretty common cost scenario:
Traditional Bulk Shipping 1 order worth $40,000 Order Processing Cost of $4.00 Each 1 Clerk, 1 PC and 1 Desk 2+ EDI Transaction Charges | Traditional Drop Shipping 2,000 orders worth $20 each Order Processing Cost of $4.00 each 3+ Clerks, 3+ PCs and 3+ Desks 4,000+ EDI Transaction Charges |
OPAL Bulk Shipping | OPAL Drop Shipping |
1 order worth $40,000 Order Processing Cost of $4.00 1 Clerk, 1 PC and 1 Desk Zero EDI Transaction Charges | 2,000 orders worth $20 each Order Processing Cost of 40 cents each 1 Clerk, 1 PC and 1 Desk Zero EDI Transaction Charges |
But what does AUTONOMOUS really mean? It enables you to eliminate nearly all, if not all, of the manual steps we must all perform when processing an order.
This includes receiving orders from your customer retailers and e-tailers, managing all of their EDI transactions, processing and invoicing orders through your ERP and accounting system, downloading or creating custom packing slips, creating shipping labels, UCC128 labels and / or other required shipping documents, getting them to the warehouse for pick, pack and ship and monitoring delivery progress of the order. Now, imagine doing that 24 hours day, 7 days per week, and only having to focus on the few exceptions that will inevitably occur outside of your control. That’s what OPAL does for you.