As sales season picks up in the year, you realize that the pathway to dominating sales goes beyond the right product. It is the combination of offering what customers are looking for, which is a great deal, product availability, and faster shipping.
On business-as-usual days, it is easy to manage inventory and sell with the existing resources at hand. As more mega-day sales appear on your calendar, discounts rain down. Products that your customers want are available at marked-down prices, and orders begin pouring in. As a traditional e-commerce business, forecasting your demand helps you plan your operations ahead of time.
But with Locad, you can manage sales better through the forecast and improve the efficiency of your business’ logistics engine.
Note: E-commerce brands must upload their expected forecast and order variance into the Order Management System at least 7 days prior. This helps the Locad team coordinate with stakeholders and allocate resources to manage sales. Forecasts window shorter than 7 days will not be accepted.
The cost of not forecasting demand
This helps you optimize inventory and manage orders. Before we proceed, let’s examine why you need to forecast your orders.
Replenish inventory on time
For businesses that work with suppliers, moving your inventory from the supplier to the warehouse in time is essential. Once your shipment is ready, the warehouse prepares for inbounding. Planning ahead, Locad can help you coordinate with the warehouse by:
- Inbounding and handling your bulky inventory
- Labelling and updating stock across sales channels
- Organizing the new consignments along with the existing ones for better expiry management
Delays in Pick and Pack
When you have higher-than-usual orders, having an unprepared staff on the ground is a recipe for disaster. The warehouse team will be stretched, slowing down the picking and packing operations. Orders take longer for dispatch, making it too late for the same-day fulfilment and next-day delivery cut-offs.
Poor Customer Experience
When you take longer than usual to ship your orders, you extend the promised fulfillment timelines. An overwhelmed staff and excess orders mean slips in packaging instructions, delayed fulfillment, and orders slipping through the cracks. This could impact your online store’s health score, cause SLA breaches, attract penalties, and temporarily restrict sales.
How to forecast demand and manage sales with Locad
With Locad’s order management system, businesses can log their forecast and make sure that warehouses have the resources they need to process orders, streamline pick-and-pack and ship orders during spikes in demand. The feature helps Locad with a minimum seven-day window during which:
The expected forecast is outlined for the Warehouse staff
When businesses lock in the demand forecast, the warehouse gets an idea of the expected deviation from a regular order. This vital information helps them strategize on staffing, organize inventory, and brief the team on specific picking and packing instructions so that they are ready when the sale orders start flowing in.
Prioritize pre-sale-related activities
Before an upcoming sale, businesses can coordinate with the warehouse staff to free up space to accommodate new inventory, review the inventory at hand, analyze stock levels, and organize the inventory based on its shelf life. For businesses that have locked-in inventory for particular sales channels, this window gives our warehouse team the needed visibility into how the inventory will be split. The seven-day notification window gives time for the ground staff to adapt to new process changes in order picking, bundling, and other forms of customizations in pick-and-pack.
Finalize staffing and contingency
When you expect a greater than 20% variance in sales for a given day, the warehouse where your inventory is stored has the heads-up to manage staffing and assign roles to ensure orders are dispatched on time. But sometimes, these sales days are popular holidays, during which an uninformed surge in sales could result in delays and SLA breaches. With demand forecasting, you can also make sure that the warehouse takes measures to process your orders during any previously scheduled assessment and maintenance activities.
With forecast management, businesses now have more control over determining sudden surges in their sales orders. With these actionable insights, brands can coordinate with stakeholders on how to prepare better to handle the influx of orders without worrying about fulfillment delays, freeing up storage space, or resource allocation. With Locad, you can turn sales days into a stress-free experience with the right resources to help you keep up with all your fulfillment promis
