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 dependent upon just a few retail sales channels.

Unfortunately, there is also a dark side to all of this goodness so if you could do any of the following would it be helpful? 

• Cut your order processing time by 90%
• Cut your order processing cost by 80%
• Increase daily warehouse shipments by 25% – 50% per day
• Send accurate Item Inventory to all of your retail sales channels when they want it 

Let’s face it, from an order processing perspective you’re now processing small parcels by the hundreds or even thousands each month, the cost to process an order hasn’t changed but is now multiplied by all of those small parcel orders, the increase in orders has caused EDI costs to skyrocket, and you’re finding yourself in more overselling, underselling or chargeback situations with your retailers because it’s so hard to accurately represent your inventory to them in a timely manner.

This is costing you money because as the number of orders increase, so does your order processing cost.  You can’t seem to get ahead of the curve.

From a warehouse management perspective you are now picking, packing and shipping an enormous number of smaller parcels, your customers are expecting their orders to be shipped and delivered in as little as 24 hours and they want to see real-time order confirmation and package tracking information.

This is losing you revenue because your warehouse is a bottleneck and can’t keep up with the demand.

OPAL provides the productivity that overcomes these problems within one platform and without the need for numerous integrated systems.  OPAL is a self-driving Order Processing and Warehouse Productivity Software Solution that enables your business to easily and quickly cut order processing costs to less than $1 per order, increase the order handling capacity of your warehouse  and achieve profitability expectations that you may think are unattainable.  

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 sustainable future? 

Probably – for a while – there’s certainly a large EDI industry out there that is doing quite well charging you fees per 100 characters for transmitting and translating data for your business. 

However, this is one of OPAL’s distinguishing characteristics– the OPAL solution has an inbuilt EDI engine that does NOT charge for EDI transmission, as well as providing touchless, self-driving (autonomous) order processing on a 24×7 basis. 

OPAL is even prepared for the future with an Application Program Interface (API).  APIs are a messaging format that allows data to be transmitted from one system to another in nanoseconds WITHOUT those expensive EDI Document fees.  Because of the Internet, the speed of data transmission has increased by a 100 fold today.

While EDI has continued to play a significant role over the last five (5) decades, business processes have changed.  The only thing that has not changed is EDI and the Industry that continues to promote it.   

Given all of that, everybody wonders why do we still need EDI?  The answer is simple – resistance to change. Traditional businesses have been using it for so long that they no longer question it.  EDI companies, on the other hand, cannot change without destroying their revenue stream. 

It’s important to note, though, that a growing number of your retail sales channels have implemented APIs that can be used by their suppliers if you’re ready to use it.  OPAL makes you ready.

Unlike the old days when you were shipping large pallet orders a few times per month, the transition to drop ship orders can be pretty traumatic.  The pain extends all the way from order processing where you are now going through the same old steps, but for potentially 100s or 1,000s of orders per day.

Then you can add in the compliance requirements your trading partners have surrounding acknowledgements, ship notices, inventory feeds, etc., etc., and their branding requirements.  Not to mention mounting chargebacks if something isn’t done perfectly. 

And, lastly, there’s the chaos it creates in your warehouse or 3PL because the warehouse layout and optimal picker and packer productivity needed to handle large numbers of small parcel shipments is so entirely different from normal pallet shipments.

All in all, this makes adequate profit hard to achieve…especially with small basket size orders.  Trading Partner portals, EDI companies, ERPs and Shipping Platforms certainly ease some of the workload, but there are still a lot of steps that require a human being to sit at a keyboard and make the next step happen.  And Heaven forbid that they make a data entry error along the way!

Consider this scenario…OPAL removes ALL of the manual steps required to process orders, completes all of the transactions required by for over 70 top retailers and e-tailers, is compliant with ALL of their requirements and has the capability to increase warehouse shipment productivity by 25%-50% if needed.

Below is one common example of how it increases profitability just in the drop ship order processing realm.  And this doesn’t even include the time spend at the end of each day to upload your inventory feeds to your Trading Partners or lost warehouse productivity.  Your individual situation may vary, but you’ll get the idea….

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 24×7 so all my orders are already downloaded

Joe: I’m acknowledging orders on the retailers’ portals

Tracy:  OPAL already sent the acknowledgments for me

Joe: I’m downloading the Packing Slips for my orders

Tracy:  OPAL already created the Packing Slips for me

Joe: I’m logging into QuickBooks and checking the inventory of each item

Tracy:  OPAL already has the item inventory from QuickBooks

Joe: I’m creating the Sales Order for each order in QuickBooks

Tracy:  Sales Orders were already created in QuickBooks by OPAL

Joe: I’m Logging into FedEx/UPS/USPS and entering the Ship to Address and creating Shipping Labels

Tracy:  OPAL has already created the Shipping Labels for me

Joe: I’m creating a Pick List

Tracy:  OPAL already created the Pick List for me, too

Joe: I’m printing and creating a package for the pickers – the Packing Slip, Shipping Labels and Pick List

Tracy:  Already sorted, sent to the warehouse and ready for picking

Later that afternoon, once the orders are shipped:

Joe: I’m logging into the Retailer’s Portal and updating the tracking number

Tracy:  OPAL has already done that

Joe: I’m logging into QuickBooks and converting the Sales order into an Invoice

Tracy:  OPAL automatically converted the Sales Order into an Invoice in QuickBooks

Joe: I’m logging into the Retailer’s Portal and sending the invoice

Tracy:  OPAL has already done that

Joe: I’m downloading inventory from QuickBooks

Tracy:  OPAL already retrieved the inventory from QuickBooks

Joe: I’m creating an inventory file in a different format for each retailer

Tracy:  OPAL has already done that for me

Joe: I’m logging into the Retailer’s Portal and sending the inventory feed file

Tracy:  OPAL already sent it – Wow! That was easy

To learn more about OPAL, please contact us.

If you’re not already doing direct to consumer (drop ship) orders they are very likely in your future.  While those big, high dollar pallet shipments are never going away, your retail trading partners are certainly scrambling to become more nimble and grow revenues by offering it to consumers.

If you are already participating in this trend, you are very aware of the challenges and problems this can cause for a supplier.  

It all starts with the use of the retailer’s portal to download the order by your order processing team.  Or, if you are semi-fortunate, SPS Commerce, CommerceHub, HighJump or some other 3rd party company is downloading that order for you and putting it into your order management system (QuickBooks, Sage, NetSuite, etc.).  The reason I refer to this as “semi” fortunate is that they are charging you for every order downloaded.

Next comes the order processing tasks.  This includes things like creating the Packing List, determining the number of boxes and weights, entering the shipping information into the FedEx, UPS, or USPS portal or another 3rd party shipping software, generating shipping labels, printing everything, and having the warehouse pick, pack and ship.

And then there’s order tracking that includes entering the tracking number in your order management system, entering the tracking number in the retailer’s portal, updating inventory and carefully filing the order –  just in case – something goes wrong and you have to troubleshoot it later.

I’m sure you agree that’s a lot of time and effort for what can be a one-item, relatively small basket size order. 

IF ANY OF THIS SOUNDS FAMILIAR, consider the following example:

But that’s only half of it.  Now, what about the load on your pickers and packers in the warehouse?  They aren’t picking cartons and putting them on pallets anymore. They have to pick and pack individual items for shipping one at a time.  Another huge amount of time and effort for a relatively small basket size order.   

To this end, OPAL also provides further savings in the pick, pack and ship process.  It’s surprising but many business owners can’t actually identify the utilization of their pickers and packers and this labor can be another $4+ in the cost to complete that drop ship order that has already absorbed the EDI cost and order processing labor cost.

To get a handle on this you need – at a minimum – the tools to know today’s order volume, determine the warehouse Location based on item availability and shipping location, determine the number of packers needed based on today’s order volume, determine the number of pickers needed based on today’s order volume, predict tomorrow’s order volume and staffing needed, and automatically generate Shipping Labels, Packing Slips, etc. without manual intervention. 

And wouldn’t it be awesome to track picker and packer productivity, the cost of pick and pack and ship, and increase the number of shipments you can complete each day?  Absolutely!

As I said earlier, IF ANY OF THIS SOUNDS FAMILIAR, then you should really take a look at OPAL, an order processing and logistics software solution designed to handle this workload autonomously and provide you with the rapid return on your investment your business needs.

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 can be pretty risky.  It may be OK if you have only one or two retailers, but what if you have five (5), ten (10) or more retailers selling the same item?  If all of your retailers sell all ten 10 SKUs it can lead to serious OVERSELLING, as well as subsequent chargebacks and impacts on your Dealer Scorecard.

Inversely, UNDERSELLING is just as bad but for different reasons.  You may do your best to allocate and report SKU quantities to your retailers based on past sales performance but may still find yourself in a position where one retailer can sell more than expected or another retailer isn’t able to sell as much as expected.  This UNDERSELLING represents a significant lost revenue opportunity.

Unless you have the capability to monitor how each of your retailers is performing on a constant basis and the ability to dynamically adjust SKU reporting up or down as needed, you are very likely to get caught in one of these situations.  You can certainly try to control this manually, but unfortunately when you’re working with a large number of retailers it requires a great deal of data, is time consuming and can be error prone. 

The ideal situation is to know the order volume by retailer and adjust inventory reporting for each SKU based on each retailer’s real-time performance.  For example, if you have 20 SKUs in stock and Retailer ABC is given an inventory feed of 10 in stock and Retailer DEF is given an inventory feed of 10 in stock, it would be really advantageous to adjust this if Retailer ABC only sells 5 of the 10 SKUs allocated and Retailer DEF can sell much more. 

This is just some of the capabilities that OPAL provides within one platform and without the need for numerous integrated systems.  OPAL is a self-driving Order Processing and Warehouse Productivity Software Solution that enables your business to easily and quickly cut order processing costs to less than $1, increase the order handling capacity of your warehouse by 50% – 100% and achieve profitability expectations that you thought were unattainable.