The Urgency Behind Changing Your Tech Stack Before Peak Shipping Season
Every year, during peak season (from September to December), we observe consistent growth in sales across the globe. For instance, in 2021, retail ecommerce sales amounted to approximately $4.9 trillion worldwide. This figure is forecasted to grow by 50% over the next four years, reaching about $7.4 trillion by 2025. Most of these sales are taking place within billions of carts online, most of them right before the Christmas season creeps in. Thanks to COVID-19 and various other factors, online shopping has seen a growth spike. As ecommerce continues to expand and grow, companies are also investing heavily in an ecosystem of technologies that will help them streamline their supply chains and logistics.
From order processing to warehouse management to last-mile delivery and customer fulfillment and satisfaction, technology offers various softwares, tools, and systems to shippers and manufacturers. These ecommerce, logistics, and transportation or warehouse management technologies have allowed companies to expand and grow with intelligent automation. But utilizing the right tech stack can be a challenge for stakeholders as newer, and more advanced tools enter the market.
So what can shippers, manufacturers, and companies do to identify the right tech stack and update their current systems, thus getting ready for peak shipping season in time? Building a reliable and relevant tech stack starts with identifying gaps in your supply chain and finding the right solutions to answer these.
How to Assess if Your Shipping and Warehousing Tech Stack is Geared Up for the Peak Season
The first step to selecting the best tech stack is to list down all of one’s operational gaps and needs. Shippers and stakeholders need to look at past peak season performance for their supply chains and ask questions like:
- Were you able to keep up with the distribution of online orders?
- Were day-to-day activities manageable?
- Were you able to deliver your orders on time?
- Was your customer service handling the additional load effectively?
- Were your customers happy with their shopping and delivery experiences?
Selecting the right tech stack must be based on the needs of your business, including partner and channel integrations. In fact, ecommerce businesses can utilize warehouse management and automation tools like ShipWorks with multiple partner integration capabilities to build a more versatile tech stack.
Top Three Benefits of Upgrading Your Tech Stack Right Now; Before Peak Season sets in
- More Efficient Shipping Through Tech Automation
Shippers need to have access to an intelligent warehouse automation platform and other intelligent automated systems that are connected to each other. When shipping higher volumes, especially during the peak festive season, ecommerce players, shippers, and stakeholders need to optimize their operations for efficiency. Such a system can optimize courier selection and routes, pick and pack priority orders faster than non-priority orders, and automatically assign predicted order volume to warehouses, among other functions.
As a result, the shipping process is likely to become more efficient and precise, with fewer roadblocks and higher savings.
- Saving Costs Through Reports and Forecasting
With your tech tools focused on reporting and data analytics, shippers get more insight and visibility into their supply chains. These technologies can easily automate and predict possible future outcomes based on data gathered over years of performance across logistics networks.
Common shipping reports, for example, measure factors such as product returns, packages shipped per hour, picking accuracy over each month, packaging material efficiency, and more. These reports help businesses fulfill KPIs and business goals and maintain consistency. As a direct result, dollars can be saved in the future.
- Future-proofing the Supply Chain
An optimal shipping software or tech stack can help businesses measure up against the competition, giving them an advantage. With options to integrate various different systems using APIs, a relevant tech stack can be the road to future-proof businesses. Shippers, manufacturers, or other stakeholders investing in shipping software must select a tech stack that promises a clear roadmap and offers a relevant and useful set of features.
For instance, one core facet of future-proofing is the integration of your systems into one easy-to-use location. Only a handful of providers really offer this sort of support—the best of them develop custom integrations to suit your needs.
Businesses of all sizes can benefit immensely from a tech stack that provides automation solutions with features that allow connectivity across different systems and databases. Shipping automation thus drives efficiency, while companies that seek to maintain the status quo push it away.
If you are planning to update your tech stack and are looking for warehouse automation options that can be integrated with services such as Magento, FreshDesk, FedEx, WooCommerce, and MailChimp, among others, consider ShipWorks.
Software offerings from ShipWorks enable you to automate large swathes of your business and integrate multiple systems to save you both time and money. Custom integrations and full open database connectivity support enable businesses to lead the way in their industry and reliably scale their operations.
If you want to know more about intelligent order routing to manage capacity constraints, schedule a demo or click here to learn more.