U.S. shoppers prepare for the holiday season as early as October, anticipating Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday. Then Christmas comes, and they shop until they drop. According to Statista, 2023 holiday sales reached almost $254 billion, with the majority being Cyber Monday sales.
The challenge peak season presents to 3PLs and other logistics operations is how to manage high volume orders efficiently without sacrificing fulfillment experience.
To prepare effectively, focus on these ecommerce peak season best practices.
Contents
- Meet demand with forecasting and inventory management
- Prepare for seasonal volume with labor planning and training
- Optimize warehouse layout and processes for efficiency
- Embrace technology and automation
- Improve shipping and delivery strategies
- Monitor performance for continuous improvement
- Prepare to fulfill brilliantly with Logiwa IO
- FAQs on preparing for Peak Season fulfillment
Meet demand with forecasting and inventory management
Demand forecasting using historical data and analytics helps you predict holiday sales more accurately. Ecommerce demand planning tools like Netstock analyze inventory data of your previous holiday sales and compare the data with current and predicted market trends.
Careful analysis gives you a grounded demand forecast you can rely on to estimate holiday sales. It helps you avoid overstocking or carrying costs as a result of overestimating demand. Demand forecasting can be qualitative or quantitative, and it’s one of the first peak season ecommerce strategies you should implement.
Inventory management is another key method to consider. Inventory management strategies include:
- Maintaining appropriate safety stock levels: Prevents stockouts and overstocks that are common during peak season.
- Using real-time inventory tracking: View your stock levels across all fulfillment centers in real time and make swift decisions like relocating idle inventory to a center with more demand.
- Implementing inventory replenishment methods: Use allocation algorithms to create a replenishment system such as “first expiring, first out,” or “first in, first out.”
- Distributing inventory across multiple fulfillment centers: It helps you lower shipping costs and expedite order delivery, which are handy benefits during peak season.
Directed putaway for smart product storage: Use putaway algorithms to automatically assign inventory location in the warehouse based on pre-set factors such as size and order velocity. This eases product picking, which helps streamline high-volume ecommerce.
Prepare for seasonal volume with labor planning and training
Handling high order volumes during peak season stretches your staff capacity. Bringing on temporary staff is one strategy for preparing to manage high-volume orders efficiently during peak season.
Warehouse managers should consider:
- Hiring temporary workers to help manage the extra workload
- Upskilling staff to boost their aptitude for handling high-volume commerce
- Cross-training employees to handle multiple tasks without compromising quality
- Using robotics and automation to supplement human labor—you can use the Robotics-as-a-service (RaaS) model to spin up extra robots during peak season and return them during off-peak seasons
Optimize warehouse layout and processes for efficiency
Here’s how to prepare your warehouse for peak season to accommodate the extra order volume and optimize picking and packing processes.
Warehouse Layout
Your warehouse layout affects space utilization and overall operational efficiency. During peak seasons, when warehouse operations rise, you can tweak the warehouse layout to get more space and support efficient operations.
A few common solutions include:
- Using a dynamic storage system that you can scale and reduce as per demand
- Installing warehouse put walls
- Creating dedicated picking and packing zones for in-demand items
- Installing an extensive signage system to ease navigation inside the warehouse
- Optimizing walking paths
Transitioning to a hybrid fulfillment operation can expand your market reach, grow your business, and diversify your services. However, managing both fulfillment types in the same warehouse is challenging. Success requires efficient facility layouts, storage methods, and advanced warehouse technologies to ensure smooth operations.
Optimizing Warehouse Processes for Efficiency
With increased picking and packing processes during peak season, warehouses can upgrade process efficiency by:
- Conduct audits and establish standardized workflows to eliminating duplicate processes
- Establish optimized labor standards
- Buying or renting extra machines and equipment
- Repairing all broken or malfunctioning warehouse equipment before the peak season
Embrace technology and automation
Leveraging dedicated warehouse and fulfillment technologies, such as fulfillment management systems (FMS) and warehouse automation tech, is a lifesaver during the peak season. Top FMS and warehouse management systems like Logiwa IO help expedite order processing, inventory tracking, and management.
This short video explains how automated workflows in Logiwa IO greatly improve warehouse efficiency. Check out these five workflow automations you could implement before peak season.
FMS collect and populate all related inventory data on a single platform to enable swift and accurate inventory ordering, managing, and delivery. The real-time visibility offered by fulfillment software boosts your fulfillment process efficiency and supports key workflow automation such as shipping, order routing, and job creation.
Besides process automation, you can also automate physical processes such as picking by using automated warehouse robots like Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs) and Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMRs). These robots speed up picking and packing activities, operating 24/7 without breaks. Other AI and IoT technologies to enhance inventory tracking and management are also becoming widely available.
Improve shipping and delivery strategies
Be prepared for the increase in shipping and the demand for quick fulfillment. Follow these peak season ecommerce tips to avoid shipping delays:
- Integrate with multiple reliable shipping carriers to ensure flexibility and cost-effectiveness
- Give customers multiple shipping options and convenient payment methods
- Use smart shipping tools to optimize shipping route delivery
- Use rate shopping to compare available carrier rates and get the best possible rate in the market
- Offer shipping discounts where possible
- Distribute inventory across different fulfillment centers and reduce shipping costs, and enhance delivery time
Monitor performance for continuous improvement
Defining and monitoring key performance indicators (KPIs) shows if your peak season strategies are profitable and efficient. Quantifying the success of your ecommerce peak season strategies sets a benchmark for future monitoring, which facilitates continuous improvement.
Important holiday season KPIs you should monitor include:
- Lead time
- Inventory shrinkage
- Perfect order rate
- Deadstock
- Return rate
- Order processing time
- Accuracy rates
Tracking and evaluating peak season KPIs proves whether your holiday fulfillment best practices are paying off or if you need to make changes to optimize your processes. Continuous KPI measurement augments current fulfillment processes and creates a vital database you can cross-reference in the future.
Prepare to fulfill brilliantly with Logiwa IO
Don’t leave money on the table during peak seasons by failing to prepare or preparing insufficiently. With high-volume ecommerce operations, your ecommerce store can easily get overwhelmed by orders it can’t satisfy. But if you plan well and follow expert tips for warehouse optimization for peak season, you’ll reap big all peak seasons and boost your bottom line.
Logiwa IO gives you all the technology and resources to design winning peak season fulfillment strategies. From real-time inventory monitoring and fulfillment management systems to workflow automation and modern warehouse technology, Logiwa IO has it all.
It’s not too late to prepare for Peak Season. Schedule a call with one of Logiwa IO’s fulfillment experts to learn how quickly we can put the benefits of Logiwa IO to work for you.
FAQs on preparing for Peak Season fulfillment
What are the best strategies for preparing for the ecommerce peak season?
Essential strategies include demand forecasting, inventory management, and optimizing warehouse layouts to ensure a successful peak season.
