Abstract
To remain competitive in the business, an organization should evaluate and determine its level of performance and how it achieves its objectives. The consumer market has evolved, and their demands have grown from best quality services to timely delivery. In the e-commerce business, customers always make purchase orders through online platforms where the company processes their requirements and then sets the products for delivery. A key factor is affecting most of the companies in the delivery duration. Customers are strict about product delivery, and any slight change in the time can make them shift to a different supplier. A business organization, therefore, has to have objectives that would allow them to maintain consumers. The need to retain clients makes the organization formulate processes and strategies that would enhance their performance to reach the objectives. To ensure they have met the goals, the business organization uses key performance indicators (KPI) to evaluate their progress. An organization has to transform its operations by assembling most departments like sales, finance, marketing, and IT to ensure it enhances consumer satisfaction through increasing the speed of order fulfillment.
Background
Currently, the world of business is dominated by technological trends that involve online shopping and ordering goods. Establishing a strategy to accomplish the objective of the business is valuable for the effectiveness of the operation. A combined effort from different departments can play a vital role in ensuring the company’s objectives are achieved. By using key performance indicators (KPI), an organization can easily determine how far the initiated strategy has helped towards achieving the objective (Adivar, HĂĽseyinoÄźlu, & Christopher, 2019). An effective strategy would allow the business company to attain its goals. Consumers order goods, and they expect the business to deliver them within the stipulated time frame. To maintain quick access to the orders, the firm must rely on an effective online program that allows the sales team to reach the customers via the e-commerce stores. Through a combined workforce of marketing, finance, and IT, the business can establish and implement processes that make the company reach its goal.
This paper will address how Slam Company that deals with the sale of Tennis balls will increase the rate at which orders made by the clients are readily available for delivery from 5 days to 3 days. It will focus on ways of improving order time by forming a cross-functional team in the organization that would enhance implementation of an updated and faster order fulfillment processes to enable the business to reduce the delivery days from 5 to 3 by December 31.
By coming up with a project team that encompasses the various departments like marketing, sales, finance, and IT, the business organization is capable of meeting the goals. Slam company management team must ensure they have a driving team that gears the company towards the stipulated objective. By forming a team of people from the departments, an element of inclusion is created that makes the employees feel part of the process. The connection will create a motive that will facilitate collaboration and combined effort towards one direction. By clearly communicating the objective with the team, they will be able to restructure how and what every department has to do to contribute to the change.
Engaging the team will enable them to decide on an effective strategy that would make the organization meet the KPI. Once the employees’ roles are defined, they will have the purpose to work according to increase the speed at which consumers’ orders are available for delivery. Pulling in one direction makes the employees fill the consumers’ orders faster and check if the necessary requirements are followed.
Assembling a team of workers from the departments would facilitate faster processes of confirming, checking, placing, and distributing the commodities. Having various departments aligned to one objective is essential as every team will ensure they perform their role faster to ensure the whole process is handled within a short period of time (Zhang, Onal, Das, Helminsky, & Das, 2019). The process of order fulfillment is involving and to make it quicker; the teams should have one voice and proper communication channel that facilitate effective passage of information to avoid delays of accessing orders forwarded by the consumers. When the delay is limited, the company will be able to perform the process within the shortest period possible.
The IT department can also develop software that connects the departments, facilitating the ease of knowing the stages of order fulfillment so that the respective department can handle its area effectively without waiting to be notified. Furthermore, outlined platform will indicate the steps that staff will follow, especially when picking goods in the warehouse for packaging. When an order arrives, the products have to be selected and packed immediately to ensure they are ready for shipment upon clearing of payments.
Increasing the inventory level will ensure the tennis balls required or orders by the consumers are available every time. This will reduce the time of sourcing them from external sources, thus giving the operation team the easy task of packing them as per the order statement and setting them for customer delivery. This will enable goods to reach customers within the stated 3 days’ time.
Furthermore, the project team can formulate through IT a system device that indicates when the order arrives, when it has been packed in the warehouse, and immediately the client pays for the commodity. The program will keep members on high alert to engage in activities that ensure the product reaches the consumer within the time frame. It will enable operators not to forget any order that has been placed by the client, therefore, enhancing reliability in the process hence making the company meet the timeline for order delivery.
The business objective of increasing the speed of order fulfillment time from 5-3 days will enable the organization to evaluate its performance. If the number of days is reduced from 5-3 days, then the company is well assured that its consumers are satisfied with the timely delivery. This will prompt more customers to order products from the business entity through an online platform since they are time conscious when it comes to delivery. Having an increased number of customers ordering from the firm signifies an increase in sales of the commodities. As the sales increase, the company will be making profits, therefore, having a better performance in the market, making it capable of meeting its goals. Some of the strategies, processes, and tools an organization can use to measure its KPIs include;
Implementation of Slotting Optimization
This strategy aims at identifying the most ordered product in the company and then placing them in one area. It involves storing the commodities in such a way that accelerates the picking process by the workers. Placing the goods at a strategic point near the shipping dock enhances the speed of conducting the fulfillment process. The closeness of the popular items makes the picking time short therefore increasing the speed. The tool to be used by the business entity is slotting optimization.
Using Smart Warehouse System
A company can implement the use of an intelligent warehouse system that entails interconnected technologies that minimize the human labor in the order fulfillment processes. An organization can use robots or the internet of things to speed up the process of identifying and picking goods in the warehouse to enhance the efficiency and accuracy of the process (Goel & Gupta, 2020). Robots can be used to gather and transport the products to the shipment point ready for delivery, saving on time that employees would have spent to pick the goods. The tool used tool to be used to facilitate the process is warehouse management systems.
Ensuring Inventory Accuracy
The organization can ensure the products available in the warehouse are adequate, and in case some are missing, they should be noted. Having real-time counts in the warehouse will ensure the consumers cannot place an order of lacking product. Real-time management allows the management to estimate the level of products and decide on what amounts to add to ensure the product is available for fulfillment. The reliable tool the organization can use is its order management system.
To maintain customers’ satisfaction, an organization should have effective strategies that help it meets the objectives aligned with consumer’s needs. Online shopping gives consumers the advantage of accessing any supplier of their choice. The need to retain consumers have mad the business organizations to set objectives to ensure they meet the clients need. Delivery time is a crucial factor that determines whether customers will continue shopping from the entity or they shift.
An organization that can offer a speedy order fulfillment process stands a high chance of retaining its clients. The company’s management board should put in place processes and tools to measure the performances to determine how effective is the operation processes towards achieving the business goals. Using key performance indicators, a company can easily establish how efficiently it is working to achieve the set objectives.
Forming a project team including sales, finance, marketing, and IT creates a robust ground for implementing faster and an updated fulfillment processes that would allow the business organization to meet and satisfy the consumers’ needs. Cross-function in the company creates a sense of purpose and gives the team a clear focus on working towards the objective. By employing strategies like using a smart warehouse system, maintaining inventory information, and implementing the slotting optimization process, the organization can meet its order fulfillment objectives.
References
Adivar, B., HĂĽseyinoÄźlu, I. Ă–. Y., & Christopher, M. (2019). A quantitative performance management framework for assessing omnichannel retail supply chains. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 48, 257-269. doi: 10.1016/j.jretconser.2019.02.024
Goel, R., & Gupta, P. (2020). Robotics and industry 4.0. In A Roadmap to Industry 4.0: Smart Production, Sharp Business and Sustainable Development (pp. 157-169). Springer, Cham. doi: 10.1007/978-3-030-14544-6_9
Zhang, J., Onal, S., Das, R., Helminsky, A., & Das, S. (2019). Fulfillment time performance of online retailers–an empirical analysis. International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management. doi: 10.1108/IJRDM-10-2017-0237