WATCH YOUR BUSINESS SUCCED BY USING THESE SHIP-FROM-STORE STRATEGIES WITH THESE 4 STEPS

As technological advancements take place in the E-Commerce sector, so does the need to stay up to date in order to stay ahead of your competition. Worldwide businesses and brands are having a hard time meeting customers’ quick delivery demand. Times are such that a customer expects to instantaneously receive their order on the same day of placing it. Take for instance Amazon Prime, which strives to improve customer loyalty and convenience by delivering on the same-day or even 2-hour delivery forcing many big brands to offer quick, free shipping opportunities to win online shoppers.

How did they do it?

By implementing the ship-from-store strategy.

It’s the perfect solution to the many retailers who fail to meet consumer demands, simply because the delivery from the warehouse is quite expensive and time consuming. As a result, retailers have to bear the shipping costs and are left with a meagre profit.

It is clear that retailers must exploit ship-by-shop services to maximize inventory efficiency and to reduce delivery and shipping costs for a profitable single day shipment and to comply with the competition, especially during the present times where the whole world is facing a pandemic.

In this article, we will take you through the 4 steps to executing a ship-from-store strategy to meet your customers’ demands and keep your business profitable.

Sync Online-Offline Inventory in Real Time

The first thing you need to make sure is that the teams, both offline and online are in sync at all times. Such teams have been working as separately and will unquestionably hinder the delivery of the omnichannel experience. The best-performing retailers are structuring their companies to connect the networks by bringing together all the members from different divisions like business development, merchandising, marketing, and finance representatives working together to identify new business processes. In the majority of stores, the employees have never been trained to pick, pack, and send orders. This lack of knowledge is one of the key failure points for managing the inventory to comply with online orders, highlighting the importance of identifying new roles and responsibilities in ship-from-store. This will include preparation for omnichannel processes and technology and identifying new ways for the store employees to receive a commission on every online order. In addition, take time to ponder on the space left in each store location before you initiate a ship-from-store initiative. It is necessary to ensure adequate room for an omnichannel operation when scouting for new sites.

Robust Technology Equals Seamless Process

It is a critical part of your store fulfillment initiative to recognize and address the technologic gap which currently prevents you from offering fast and cheap supplies. Dealers need an online ordering system that can direct them to the shop nearest to the shipping address of the customer. To do that, you need to have access to the inventory of the store’s real-time stock for processing, packaging and shipping online orders in all stores. Unfortunately, the accessible shop inventory is not offered by conventional digital trading channels and there are no resources to satisfy the requisite online ordering for the conventional points of sale solutions. It’s best to have a Distributed Order Management (DOM) system in place that combines digital commerce and POS to accept online orders, evaluate inventory in shops and take care of the delivery of orders to the customer’s nearest place.

Start Implementing your plans with the right partner

Any successful ship-from-store strategy is focused on the best-in-class technology. Pick a Company for Distributed Order Management (DOM), do some study online, and make calls to the list of providers to obtain a better understanding of their differentiating factors. Build a project plan once you have made a decision. Bring the store and DOM development teams together in one room to identify action items and make a timetable for integration and execution and what needs to happen on both sides for the successful implementation of this strategy. Once that is laid out and your DOM provider works hard to customize the equipment you need for your strategy, start training your store employees and beta test online orders. One thing you need to remember that this is not a one-time training. As consumer preferences and activities change, so does the strategy and the training. When you feel you’re ready, implement a trial run with a few stores before spreading into the entire shop network.

Use Measuring tools to solidify your success

Once you’ve set the ball rolling in motion, it’s important to put in place some KPI’s to measure your success. These are some of them:
– Inventory Sell-Through: it shows you an increase in sales of your inventory.

– Shipping Costs- To see if there is a reduction in your overall logistics.

– Markdowns- This shows you if you’re able to clear stock.

– E-Commerce Conversion Rate- This shows you how orders are getting placed online.

These metrics should be developed to align all team members with a common goal, assess progress, and identify areas for improvement.

Today everybody expects fast delivery, and with these steps, you’re on your way to successfully execute your ship-from-store strategy. One thing to note here is that ship-from-store will complicate your inventory management system one way or another and, if implemented incorrectly either due to outdated technology or insufficient training, will ultimately result in a worse customer experience. The key to a successful ship-from-store initiative lies in real-time inventory tracking, which requires a unified commerce approach through Distributed Order Management technology.

If you’re someone who’s’ not been able to successfully implement a robust DOM, it’s best to leave it to the professionals and by that we mean us.
Why us?

Because, at FinPlus Business Solutions, we are dedicated to solve your business problems with the power of technology, attract the right set of audience, execute various digital strategies through different mediums including Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, etc. to help boost your sales. Whether it is developing an e-commerce website or improving your rank on various search engines we have been successfully impacted over 300+ brands and helping businesses grow by a minimum of 150% within a span of a few months. Our proprietary inventory management system for various businesses helps with creating multiple digital stocks on various market places simultaneously and manage them centrally, thus creating an efficient and robust sales channel.

Feel free to contact usand let’s see how we can help you grow your business in the most economical way possible.