With the maturity of business, more and more e-commerce brands and sellers are expanding to all channels and new platforms. Although selling in different channels may increase your exposure and bring you into contact with new customer groups, multi-channel logistics management may also increase your workload.
In order to help sellers reduce this pressure and manage in an orderly way, this paper outlines five common logistics mistakes of multi-channel sales and how to avoid them.
1. Inefficient transportation and waste of storage costs
First, you need to ensure that your operational base (transport logistics and warehouse maintenance costs) is as efficient as possible. Because if you have problems with your existing operations, they will increase exponentially as your business grows.
Therefore, please check and evaluate your current transportation process and storage space to ensure that the process is as simplified as possible. To ensure your forecast is accurate, especially for multiple warehouses, it is recommended that the seller monitor the quantity of goods sold in 30, 60 and 90 days. At the same time, the purchase time of the supplier shall be included. Keep detailed records every quarter and check regularly.
In addition, you can take this opportunity to reassess your human resources. If the cost of workers is too high, you can cut unnecessary employees; if the processing time is too long, you can hire more employees.
2. Using FBA method for non Amazon orders
FBA is the business pillar of many Amazon sellers, but some channels, especially Wal Mart, usually prohibit FBA.
If your entire online business depends on the FBA, it will be difficult for you to expand to other markets. First, you can invest in warehouses and play a more active role in transportation, but for some sellers, this is actually difficult. In this case, you may be able to hire a new, independent third-party logistics service to help you with most of the work that the FBA does.
3. Handle each item separately
In order to reduce the workload of multi-channel sales, you need to integrate your multi-channel orders and improve the degree of automation as much as possible. Order management software (such as ecomdash, SaaS platform for automated order management) allows you to create shipment defaults and rules based on product weight and other data, and then the system will automatically assign you transportation company, specify package type and complete delivery settings. Software for you to deal with the more onerous part, you have to do is to print the packing list and ensure that it is not faulty.
The ecomdash feature also includes:
• batch print up to 250 shipping labels and packing lists
• summarize different USPS labels into a scan form
• print "sort list" with aisle and bin locations to speed up processing
If you're not a self delivery company, solutions like ecomdash can automatically distribute new orders to specific logistics companies based on the priority you set.
4. Manual bookkeeping
Manual bookkeeping increases the probability of human error. Maybe you can manage the sales, delivery and budget of a single channel without any detail, but each new channel expansion means more work, which virtually improves your chances of making mistakes: calculation errors, data confusion, wrong goods, etc. It is suggested that multi-channel sellers can use some foreign aid, or use the automation system that can handle such tasks.
You can also take this opportunity to adjust your inventory accounting method. For example, "first in, first out" or "last in, first out.".
5. Update your inventory by yourself
Inventory level is a fatal mistake for many multi-channel sellers. It may look simple at the moment, but if you sell on multiple sites, it can quickly become one of the most time-consuming tasks. Even if you only sell through a single channel, seemingly harmless mistakes can lead to negative comments, reduce your liking on social media and even the loss of customers.
Every time you sell a product, you need to update the inventory of that product on each of your platforms. If the number you listed is not correct, there may be oversold. At that time, you not only need to refund the customers who have already placed the order, but also explain to them why the goods showing the goods are out of stock. Despite all your efforts, customers may still not buy your account.
The workload of updating the inventory level for each order of each platform is huge, and it is easy to delay, and the probability of human error is greatly increased. Therefore, it is recommended that the seller use inventory management software (such as ecomdash) to deal with the problem from the bank. The seller can view the inventory data including eBay, woo commerce, Wal Mart, Magento and Etsy in real time in ecomdash. At the same time, it can help sellers manage or merge orders across platforms, automatically select goods, pack and select transportation labels, etc., so that sellers can better manage the delivery of third-party orders. The tool charges between $60 and $650 per month.
Summary
The difficulty and complexity of multi-channel sales is not bluff. Although multi-channel sales can bring more profits, it is really worth the efforts of the seller, but logistics and inventory management with the increase of business volume is a long-term headache for the seller, whether dealing with the order quantity fluctuation, ensuring the delivery process or storing appropriate amount of goods, a thorough inventory strategy can help the seller easily overcome these problems. Therefore, it is suggested that sellers should expand their human and software resources, and use a third-party tool and third-party logistics to help them manage their inventory efficiently to improve their business level.
(compiled by / Xie Xinxin, hugo.com)