Increased orders during the holidays are a great thing for your business. It means your product is in demand and you’re making sales. You’ll want to make sure you’re prepared to handle the increased demand that the holiday season brings, though. To make sure holiday orders get where they need to be, when they need to be there, and in the condition promised, plan ahead, review your supply chain management, and get extra help.
Plan Ahead
There are a few ways you can plan ahead in order to help deal with increased orders during the holidays. Demand planning is a core supply chain trend that involves creating a realistic forecast for sales of products, including any new products that are launching. Once you have an idea of the demand for your product, you can estimate order levels and hire additional staff to meet increased product demands.
When planning supply chain logistics, you might want to consider setting earlier shipping deadlines. Making promises that products will arrive before the holidays can become stressful if adequate shipping deadlines haven’t been set. Consider where the majority of your products will be shipping from and to and plan accordingly.
Review Your Supply Chain
Management of your supply chain involves everything from sourcing the materials that go into your products all the way to getting your products delivered to your customer. You need supply chain management for your product to ensure every step is coordinated in the most efficient way possible. Review your supply chain to make sure each part of it is prepared to handle increased orders. If you discover, for example, that sourcing the materials needed to manufacture your product is going to be a problem, you can find a way around this before having to deal with increased orders during the holidays.
Get Extra Help
Hiring additional staff during the holidays is one way to ease the burden of increased orders. Order fulfillment and outsourcing are two others. An order fulfillment company can take over the order taking, packing, and shipping. Many companies also handle package tracking questions from customers. Most order fulfillment companies will begin working with you months in advance to devise a plan for tackling holiday orders.
Outsourcing is another option. If you’d rather not hire extra staff during the holiday season you can outsource certain jobs to a temp agency. Where outsourcing is particularly useful though, is when it comes to supply chain management. By outsourcing your supply chain management, you will free up time previously spent on coordinating manufacturing, distribution, and shipping. At Pivot International, our supply chain management services use Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Manufacturing Resource Planning (MRP) software to optimize all the steps in your supply chain.
At Pivot we manage every aspect of transporting materials and finished goods to their final destination. We are dedicated to providing our clients with full service support in product manufacturing and distribution and believe that our job continues even after your completed product is delivered. To learn more about how we can help with increased orders during the holidays or any other time of the year, contact us today.
