You’ll know that it’s past time to upgrade to a sophisticated Delivery Management System when items start getting lost, customers begin reporting long delays in shipment, and your staff is overworked and show signs of stress. All of these symptoms are avoidable if you follow the ABCs of an efficient Delivery Management System.
- Presentation
Advertising and buying are half of your customer’s journey—delivery is the other half. If you have an efficient delivery management system (DMS), it is another way to show your customers that you value them by offering them fast, affordable shipments. Look at how much Amazon invests in promoting and publicizing their one-day delivery Prime service—they want their name to be completely synonymous with fast, hassle-free delivery. As a retailer yourself, you want to have something at least approaching that level of service unless you want to get beaten in your reviews and star ratings.
- Behind the Scenes
The goal of any delivery system should be to reduce errors and make the process as efficient as possible every step of the way. There’s little point in having fast shipping if it takes your fulfillment department two days to wrap and label. The physical side of fulfillment and shipment—by which we mean staffing, storing, and other details like making sure your conveyor belts are up to date and working safely through fluentconveyors.com—there is another side that lets you fine-tune the process and identify and eliminate hold-ups in the chain.
- Transparency
It is important to consider the needs of the customer when implementing a delivery management system. Something that you may not have considered is sharing the information that you have with them, either through your website or an app. Good DMS software allows you and the customer to monitor the delivery process, as well as ensure that your drivers are delivering their orders on time, and even allows users to update customers about their orders in real-time.
- Take Advantage of the Technology
It is now possible to update your couriers on their routes so that they can be notified of their progress and be alerted to any problems they might encounter on the way to the address location. The courier can also transmit proof of delivery—either a picture or a signature—in order to prove that the packages have been delivered. This has become important as many customers have been reporting incidents of missed deliveries. You will be able to view real-time information on how the package has been received. The software additionally should allow drivers to be informed of possible delays on their routes. Even the most basic software will be able to track your shipments, allowing you to monitor if deliveries are made on time and within budget, and a better one will enable an estimated time of delivery, thus predicting the when the packages will arrive. Customers love this, so remember to feed that back to them.
- Organize your stock
A good DMS has warehouse manager features to support the fulfillment service, and this can be quite elaborate, such as pinpointing a box on a shelf that contains the item bought. It can tell how long an order took from purchase to packaging, thus giving you a snapshot of the efficiency in your back rooms.
