Meet the experts
- Alex Townson – Head of Outsourced Supply Chain – YF an Unleashed Partner
- Beth Chapman – Managing Director – Starlinks Global a Mintsoft customer
- Daniel Hayward- Head of Operations – Candy Kittens an Unleashed customer
- Kate Lester – Founder – Diamond Logistics, a supplier to Unleashed customer TrueStart
How fulfilment drives business success
In the recent E-commerce Peak Season Benchmark Report by Access Mintsoft, it was highlighted that during Black Friday 2023:
- nearly 80% of users processed more orders in November with 20% handling twice as many orders as usual
- nearly 60% of respondents ran out of stock during peak season
- stock management was confirmed as the second largest challenge during peak season by respondents, with order processing speed being the largest challenge that they face
- nearly half, 45% of users experienced an increase in their time to dispatch.
With those statistics in mind, we asked our 4 expert panellists to discuss supply chain challenges during on- and off-peaks, and how SMEs can optimise fulfilment processes to meet demand.
Which are the most important fulfilment KPIs?
To accurately measure improvements made to fulfilment processes, businesses need to know what KPIs they want to measure, and have a benchmark data set to begin with and track against as optimisations are made.
Dan at Candy Kittens discussed the KPIs they use to measure efficiency for their B2B order fulfilment, “We’re really focusing, on 3 operational KPIs:
- Service level, ensuring that we’re delivering every unit of stock that all our customers want.
- On time, so some brands and companies will merge those into an OTIF KPI. I like to keep them separate, to make an informed decision to delay an order to fulfil it on time, or you can make the decision to short an order to get the stock out to the customer on time.
- Forecast accuracy.”
Dan goes on to add that the challenge is having the right data to measure against, and ensuring that performance indicators are accurate.
Alex at YF provided an insight into the advice he would provide to any of his brands: “When we’re doing supplier reviews and tenders, we are always asking warehouses what is their picking accuracy, what their on-time and full (OTIF) fulfilment rate is.”
He goes on to add, “OTIF is front and centre of everything we do. It’s a metric that can really tell us so much about the supply chains that we’re managing:
- Do we have any issues with suppliers?
- Do we have any issues in our forecasting, our planning?
- Are warehouses, picking and packing orders correctly?
- Are they being dispatched on time?
- Do we have any issues with the couriers?”
Turning suppliers into partners
SMEs rely heavily on suppliers throughout their supply chains to ensure optimal efficiencies, from 3PLs fulfilling orders to carriers getting orders to the consumer. Speaking to our panel, it’s clear that communication and transparency between business and supplier are crucial to turning suppliers into partners.
Kate, founder of 3PL, Diamond Logistics, said, “It’s so important in terms of capacity when working with FMCG, that you’re able to be responsive. If a product suddenly goes viral and you’ve got a thousand orders, the fulfilment centre needs to be able to cope.”
Beth, Managing Director for cross-border carrier, Starlinks Global, added to this by giving an example of how as a partner, Starlinks were able to deliver for their customer.
“A customer of ours gave us 20,000 additional items to the US in one week. Our role is to flex into our networks and ensure we can move those parcels without delay, so the retailer doesn’t feel any pain, but more importantly, their consignees don’t feel any pain.”
Dan added from a brand perspective, the importance of suppliers being partners is because: “We are not going to be able to handhold every single order through our suppliers and our partner systems.”
One of the ways Candy Kittens builds partnerships is through regular communications. “We make sure that we have regular touch points with our partners to monitor macro-business performance.”
Are there efficiencies in automating B2B sales?
For many businesses, technology that enables the automation of manual tasks is the key to unlocking efficiency. We asked our panel how they embrace automation:
Dan discussed the automation they use for their B2B and B2C order fulfilment. “For our B2C orders, we use Shopify and that integrates into the backend of our fulfilment partner. With our B2B, it’s all about how we process orders quicker. There are lots of great synergies that you can offer to customers. You can create a B2B platform for customers to come in and place orders.”
Dan explained a challenge that Candy Kittens is currently experiencing – many of their customers use manual methods of ordering such as email and PDF, which has resulted in them seeking a way to automate the transfer of that data into the Unleashed system, to be sent to their warehouse for fulfilment even quicker.
Beth discussed the importance of automation for Starlinks to manage high volumes of parcels seamlessly.
“The bigger we become, the more we will rely on automation. Whether that’s what we do in our warehouse from a processing perspective, what we do from a dim, weigh, scan perspective; and a containerisation perspective.”
Beth went on to add that quality checks, invoicing and billing reconciliation are all automated too. Without automation, these processes would require tens of additional headcounts to ensure they deliver the same level of care and monitoring.
Increasing picking accuracy
A common warehouse KPI is picking accuracy due to the core role it plays in ensuring warehouses are operating efficiently.
We asked Kate to explain how she ensures picking accuracy in her 3PL fulfilment centres.
“We’ve got warehouse scanners. We’re scanning into locations, scanning against the delivery note and pick request.”
Alex added: “Where I’ve seen mis-picks are either where the 3PL hasn’t got the right WMS or right system for labelling stock locations clearly, or they’ve just done it completely incorrectly – they’re storing stock in the wrong location, it’s marked incorrectly in the system and they’re not keeping their systems up to date.”
How equality, diversity and inclusion in fulfilment can lead to a more motivated workforce
We asked our panellists about their own EDI practices. They all echoed the importance of having the right people in the right roles regardless of age, gender, ethnicity or background, and ensuring that the workforce is empowered through a positive workplace culture and the flexibility to juggle their personal and professional responsibilities.
Beth said, “We’re only as strong as the rest of our colleagues and teamwork and collaboration is key to our success. We’re all about the right person, right role, whether they be male, female, however old they might be – respecting and supporting our colleagues is absolutely critical to us.”
Alex discussed the ways that YF has fostered their workplace culture.
“I think it’s really important to give everyone within the organisation a voice no matter their seniority; to foster an environment where anyone feels that they can contribute and come in with their point of view. At YF, we have a separate culture committee who are constantly meeting to work on the culture of the company and make it a better place to work for everyone.”
Kate added the impact of having a diverse age range within the workforce. “I think age is very important too. The reality is that age and diversity bring a beautiful kind of input, energy, strength, a mixture of wisdom and enthusiasm, experience and innovation.”
Dan examined the importance of diversity in the workforce for a ‘young’ brand.
“What we are really focusing on is building out that team culture, and bringing in a team of experts that know what they’re doing regardless of background or whatever experiences that they might have gone through in the past. For us, it’s about how we foster an environment that’s going to help the business grow.”
Parting wisdom from the fulfilment experts
To round up, we asked our experts to give us a nugget of advice, that they would love to have known earlier.
Alex started us off with:
“Clear communication. The worst thing that can happen in fulfilment is letting people down without having told them before or telling them last minute. At the earliest opportunity, communicate to the customer that something isn’t going to be quite right with their delivery and what you’re going to do about it to make it better for them.”
Dan continued the advice. “Every case counts. If you treat every order with that same vision, then it doesn’t matter whether that’s going into the biggest grocery multiple in the country or if it’s going to your nan’s house for a delivery. Having that ethos across your full operations will ultimately mean that you are going to succeed.”
Beth added, “Contingency planning is critical, as well as partnering with your partners. Let your partners help you and trust your carrier. If your carrier is not proactively coming to you with ideas and how they can help you grow, how they can help you reduce cost, how they can deliver a better customer experience, and how they are continuously improving, then they are not a partner.”
Kate concluded with some advice for SMEs working with 3PLs.
“If your 3PL doesn’t have decent tech and systems, don’t use them. Everybody should be enabled to the point where they can do best-cost routing. You’ve got 100% transparency, you know where your stock is, it integrates with your marketplaces, you can track your carriers and if their pick accuracy is less than 99.999%, then just don’t go there.”
