What does a “perfect” drop ship order really mean? If you believe you know, you also know that managing the multitude of moving parts necessary to achieve it can be mind boggling.
We’ve written of managing the “perfect order” before and that OPAL (Order Processing and Logistics software) can help you succeed, but it’s really important to understand what is at stake for your business. With an average warehouse pick and pack cost of $4 – $7, plus a minimum of $2 – $4 order processing labor cost, and at least $1 in EDI document fees per drop ship order, the profit on many items is already being squeezed now that you’re shipping individual parcels instead of pallets.
And, then, when an order goes wrong everything stops! You spend an enormous amount of extra time and effort researching and correcting the problem and very often incur the expense of a call tag to retrieve the incorrect item and expedited shipping of the product that didn’t arrive when or where it was supposed to. Then, to top it all off, you receive Vendor Compliance Penalties averaging 1% or more of revenue from your retailer and your Vendor Score Card suffers. If it’s a chronic problem, your retailer doesn’t want to work with you anymore.
The American Productivity and Quality Center, (APQC) defines the “perfect order” as flawlessly taking and fulfilling a customer order. This includes entering the order correctly, allocating inventory immediately, delivering the product on time, and sending an accurate invoice. Then your retailer adds on additional requirements such as all the necessary EDI documents (Acknowledgement, Confirmation, ASN, Invoices, etc.), PO pricing, packaging, labeling, shipping documentation and accurate, on-time inventory feeds.
It is speed and accuracy that makes a supplier valuable to their retailer. Your inability to perform costs retailers billions of dollars every year in unexpected rework and processing. This is what is at stake for your business.
So, what makes OPAL different and what does it mean to you?
OPAL is 100% compliant with nearly 100 retailers – and new ones are being added each month. OPAL processes a retailer’s orders for the supplier and complies with all necessary transactions (Acknowledgement, Confirmation, ASN, Invoices, etc.), PO pricing, packaging, labeling, shipping documentation and accurate, on-time inventory feeds. This performance standard makes you very valuable to your retailers, increasing your business with them.
OPAL also reduces your operating costs because it processes orders with a no-touch, self-driving (autonomous) approach that works 24×7, without the need for an additional Warehouse Management System, Shipping Software, Retailer Portal or EDI document charges. And it does it in less than 8 seconds per order.
Lastly, it increases your overall productivity by reducing Order Processing time by up to 90%, Order Processing Cost by up to 80% and Undelivered Packages to less than 1%. It even increases Order Accuracy up to 99%, as well as Picker and Packer Productivity and Daily Shipments by up to 50%.
Consider OPAL as your solution, an intelligent software system that manages the order processing and fulfillment workflow in a method that is efficient and retailer compliant. Power up and power on with OPAL.