Capture the Gen Z Market with Speed
Generation Z (Gen Z) is the demographic that many e-commerce companies are looking to market and sell to today and for good reasons. By 2020, this entrepreneurial generation of influencers is projected to account for 40 percent of consumers and has $44 billion worth of buying power today. Moreover, Gen Zers value hyper-convenience and want services and products they can consume immediately. This “need for speed” is also fostered by the Amazon Effect—the e-commerce-driven ongoing evolution and disruption of the retail market both online and offline.
Thanks to the Amazon Effect, today’s consumers have higher expectations when it comes to shipping, including Gen Zers. They want fast shipping, and fulfilling fast shipping requires supporting operational efficiency. So, it’s critical for warehouse managers, and business owners of e-commerce companies to use technology and have systems in place that help accelerate their picking, packing, and shipping processes. Here are three effective ways to capture the Gen Z market with speed.
1. Use Analytics to Find Fulfillment Bottlenecks
Fulfillment bottlenecks can dictate the speed of an e-commerce company’s picking, packing, and shipping processes in the warehouse by slowing it down. This phenomenon is especially true when e-commerce companies have not identified the bottleneck that is hampering their fulfillment operations. Without knowing the root of what is causing productivity to decline, e-commerce companies risk having inefficient fulfillment processes that can adversely impact their profitability. However, e-commerce warehouse managers can use analytics to find fulfillment bottlenecks by using platforms that support warehouse management and data integration, such as ShipWorks. For instance, the ShipWorks Hub web interface allows warehouse managers to centralize data from multiple systems to simplify identifying fulfillment bottlenecks. Warehouse managers can use this web interface to quickly gather workforce productivity insights from the dashboard to see any shifts in efficiency, such using data based on shipments by the hour of the day to identify a slow time of the day for shipping.
2. Leverage Quality Control to Identify and Fix Problems
Maintaining quality throughout the warehouse shipping and handling process is essential for e-commerce companies. However, inefficient quality control measures can hamper the progress of fulfilling orders and shipping them out on time for orders that require two-day shipping or fast shipping delivery options. Yet, warehouse managers and higher-level e-commerce executives can use systems that support scan-based quality control to speed up the fulfillment process and improve fulfillment operations efficiency without sacrificing accuracy. For instance, warehouse coordinators can implement scan-based quality control by using ShipWorks Single Scan to scan the barcode from a packing slip and identify all the items that need fulfillment. Single Scan also gives warehouse coordinators the ability to identify duplicate orders and use the Multiple Matching Orders feature to correct the issue so that multiple products aren’t shipped in error.
3. Speed Up the Process With Automation
When warehouse coordinators and staff enter information manually, it can slow down the production process. However, e-commerce companies can use automation to accelerate fulfillment with shipping platforms, such as ShipWorks. For instance, warehouse managers can save time with entering e-commerce customers’ shipping addresses, repeat orders, and other important customer data manually by using ShipWorks’ ShipSense. After the initial placement of customers’ orders, ShipSense can populate the existing customers’ addresses or other pertinent information automatically in the shipping fields using information from past orders. For instance, ShipSense can automatically fill out the size field with “large” for an existing customer who typically orders a large size shirt. ShipWorks also has rules and actions features warehouse managers can leverage to automate various tasks to support their shipping process. For example, warehouse managers can use ShipWorks’ Automation Action Manager and Action Editor to enable actions and create rules for events that trigger an action automatically, such as printing a label once a shipment is processed.
Final Thoughts
Capturing the Gen Z market calls for e-commerce warehouse managers and higher-level managers to have a strategy for handling slow processes that hamper meeting fast shipping deadlines. But facilitating a fast order and delivery process to meet the needs of the Gen Z demographic requires putting key systems and practices in place to support operational efficiency. By using platforms like ShipWorks and setting up the right systems from the start, warehouse managers can reduce bottlenecks, improve productivity to support fast shipping and, ultimately, enhance the e-commerce company’s profitability.
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