As consumers continue to navigate the rising costs of everything right now, retailers and eCommerce businesses are beginning to notice the effects of slowing consumer demand.
Many retailers began pulling back on massive investments in warehousing and distribution capacity following the 2022 peak holiday season, knowing that data suggests we may be nearing the never-ending growth of online shopping that the Covid era brought for eCommerce and retailers.
February is traditionally a slower month, but the warehousing and storage industry has cut 5,500 jobs in the past month— one of the largest drops in employment in the past decade in an industry that has added more than 600,000 jobs since February of 2020.
Trucking employment fell by 8,500 jobs in February, also the most significant drop since April of 2020, but executives at many trucking companies have anticipated freight demand will rebound in the second half of the year.
With many experts thinking we have a challenging few months ahead, how will you make the most in of this slower time to improve processes and be prepared for when it picks back up again?
Automation Simplifies your Fulfillment and Shipping Processes
As eCommerce ebbs and flows with consumer demand, the slower market is an excellent time to make adjustments. Errors are more costly with the logistics industry reducing in size to weather this and automation in fulfillment and shipping will drastically reduce costly mistakes.
When looking for a software solution—many of our clients are seeking options that are customizable to their individual needs. A supplier of Kitchen & Bath Décor, as well as an OPAL fanatic, was seeking a software solution that focused on automation of their biggest bottleneck – fulfillment and shipping.
They were manually processing orders – a process that is very time consuming because the fulfillment team would consolidate orders from different eCommerce channels, manually generate shipping labels and then manually upload tracking into each partner’s vendor portal.
Manual processes provide a large margin of error because the team is human and mistakes happen that unfortunately result in shipping wrong products and/or to wrong addresses.
Upgrading their automation and processes with OPAL improved order processing by automatically generating labels and pick lists, as well as made the fulfillment process more efficient. They were able to process more orders in less time with drastically reduced errors.
To learn more about how OPAL provided peace of mind as their team was able to clean up processes and become more efficient – click here and scroll to case study #6.
Simplify with OPAL’s 4-in-1 Software Solution
EDI | Order Management | Warehouse Management | Shipping
OPAL is the innovative solution to simplify your small to mid-sized to enterprise business fulfillment needs in today’s rapidly transforming retail world.
As your business looks to be proactive to improve processes in this potentially slower season of 2023, OPAL is here to partner with you and have you ready for your next season of growth.
To learn more about how your eCommerce business can thrive this new year, click here!