The four pain points that will kill your efficiency

It’s a hard world out there for a beginner merchant. What with the Covid-19 pandemic and the resulting degradation of the global supply chain slowing down operations and ratcheting up prices, you may wonder if wrestling with headache after headache is simply par for the course. Although it’s absolutely the case that there will always be certain difficulties that are impossible to predict and have to be dealt with in the moment, this is by no means saying that the entire field of ecommerce selling and fulfillment is filled with pitfalls that you’ll be forever unable to avoid.

Even though we currently live in difficult times, there are a number of things that you can keep an eye out for. These are pain points which gum up the works just enough to make the rest of your operations slow and inefficient, causing needless delays and frustrations. By correctly identifying and remedying these pain points, you’re able to tighten up your business considerably and move forward into a shiny, efficient future. Which pain points are we talking about, exactly? Read on for a list of four that, if you’re able to successfully eliminate them, will go a long way towards improving not only the health of your company and your bottom line, but your peace of mind as well.

Inventory inaccuracies

Have you ever heard of ghost inventory? We’re not talking about the kinds of ghosts you might meet on Halloween. Ghost or phantom inventory refers to the event where products are shown to be available by your point of sale system, but aren’t actually available in your store. This is especially problematic in e-commerce, where a merchant may offer a product through multiple selling channels, and therefore oversell product without realizing. The more products and SKUs representing them that you have, the harder it is to identify and prevent phantom inventory from causing mischief in your operations. It’s important to have a robust inventory-management system for this exact reason, to prevent complications and miscalculations relating to intake delays, glitches, or shrink.

Manual entry

Many companies are unfortunately still stuck in the 20th century where clipboards and manually copying down product numbers and SKUs was the order of the day. Thankfully, we live in the future now, and such endeavors are no longer necessary. Even still, more corporations than you would expect have yet to realize this fact. Manual intake and changes are not only slower than the alternative, but introduce an element of human error into the equation which can translate into costly mistakes and slip-ups. Why even take the chance? Instead, make use of barcodes, scanners, and software that automatically sends necessary orders to the warehouse.

Team miscommunication

All the technology and smooth operation in the world won’t help if you and your team aren’t speaking the same language at the end of the day. What do we mean by this? Well, your employees aren’t mind readers. You may think you’re being perfectly clear, but if there are repeated mistakes or things are consistently done incorrectly, consider that you might not be communicating quite as clearly as you think you are. Implementing regular team meetings, a centralized messaging system, and an extremely clear order of operations when it comes to your key processes can go a long way towards reducing the sorts of misunderstandings that begin to pile up in a million little ways, grinding your operations to a screeching halt.

A lack of integration

Seamless integrations and connections are one of the best technological tools we as modern fulfillment experts have at our disposal. In this day and age, there’s simply no reason to manually port everything back and forth, painstakingly copying and pasting different data values. Having one main interface where you can manage everything from generating shipping labels to ordering new product to be manufactured to adjusting your distribution across your warehouse network goes a long way towards streamlining your operations and ensuring everything runs as smoothly as humanly possible.

In conclusion

By following these simple tips, you can keep inefficiencies to a minimum and leave yourself free to explore other aspects of your business that will make a long-lasting difference to customer satisfaction. P2Pseller is happy to help you get there. We offer a number of key software integrations to make sure that you’re able to have real-time updates as to the location of every single order, which can be conveniently checked through either the website or mobile app. No matter whether you’re at the office, on the bus, or sitting on the couch, you always have the option of tracking each and every parcel you send out. Register a free account with us today in order to browse all our offerings and see how we can help you scale infrastructure, sell more, and grow your business. All with zero stress and zero phone calls.