The busy season is over for a large percentage of retailers. It’s time to take stock of what worked and what didn’t for you as a supplier. For example:
- Did you have to hire temporary employees? If yes, how many did you need and at what cost?
- Were you able to process orders in time to meet the customer’s delivery date?
- Was your warehouse able to keep up and meet the customer’s delivery date?
- Was your inventory accurate or did you suffer with backorders?
- Was the cost of EDI documents extremely high?
If the answer is “yes” to any of these, then you need to be aware that OPAL addresses all of these things efficiently and inexpensively.
- There is no need to hire for peak periods. OPAL provides touchless order processing, meaning orders are retrieved, inventory checked, packaging calculated, and all shipping documentation is ready for batching and printing by the warehouse in seconds.
- Orders are processed without human intervention and ready for pick, pack and shipment. OPAL processes orders 24×7 without human intervention, eliminating order processing bottlenecks. The only human intervention required is for the 3%-5% of exceptions that will always occur.
- Time and motion are minimized in the warehouse and shipment of orders is accurate. OPAL provides the tools to pick in a sequence that minimizes the number of steps a picker must take, enables packers to have sufficient packing material in the area before beginning to pack, having master group items kitted in advance for packing, having shipping labels and documents pre-printed based on dimension and weight and sales order scanning for shipment and inventory accuracy.
- Inventory is accurately maintained and reported to your retail sales channels. OPAL tracks inventory, back orders, reorder levels, your suppliers and lead time – then computes inventory and sends it frequently and accurately to all of your retail channels. All without overstating inventory to low volume retailers and understating it to high volume retailers.
- EDI costs are gone. OPAL takes advantage of the direct EDI links provided by retailers and e-tailers enabling you to process an order with $0 cost for EDI documents. OPAL downloads POs (Document 850) from retailers and e-tailers, sends back Acknowledgements (Document 997), ASNs (Document 856), Invoices (Document 810) and Product Inventory (Document 846) with no EDI charges and is 100% compliant with each retailer.
Sound “too good to be true”? If you missed expectations in 2019 or were simply struggling to keep up by throwing more labor resources at the problem, check out OPAL. It may be the answer and it costs nothing to find out.