To maximize multichannel efficiency in your supply chain, you should consider the following:
- Automate your operations
Automation is now taking over various industries and your supply chain should not lag behind. The simplest way of introducing automation to your firm is by building it into your return process. Automation eliminates problems in return policies that are among the key challenges that many consumers face. With proper automation, you can analyze efficient routes, crowded warehouses, and you can also track complicated shipments and inventories more easily.
- Train your employees
Employee training in the supply chain should be done regularly considering the ever-changing technological landscape. Training should be done on multichannel selling to enhance continuity of experience among the employees and ensure that your customers always get consistent and the best service. Your employees should always be aware of the conditions in the market, discounts and promotions, coupons, loyalty perks, and your partners. Keeping your employees aware of different aspects of your business will not only increase your company’s employee retention rate but will also improve customer and employee satisfaction and maintain predictable outcomes.
Employee training should stress a culture of trustworthiness as this is the key to progress and success. One way of establishing trustworthy employees is by investing in employee awareness that focuses on security. These programs should also attempt to bolster your firm’s commitment to efficiency in operations.
- Design proper incentives
Investing in technology is good but technology alone without proper pay for employees will water-down your efforts. As such, incentives for your employees should be properly engineered based on the pay-for-performance scheme as doing this can result in improved labor productivity and efficiency. Since more than 50 percent of warehouse labor is pick-and-pack, you need to be sure that you are paying for productivity you are getting.
- Simplify processes
Long complicated processes in the supply chain are what turn away many clients and potential customers. If you have been layering new processing over the existing ones and you feel that the product flow no longer makes sense, you need to take a fresh look at the physical processes involved. You need to ensure that processes involved in product flow and fulfillment of orders are short and less complicated since fewer steps and fewer touches lead to lower costs and increased efficiency altogether.
- Invest in analytics to measure performance and transparency
Transparency is a leading area that every customer considers in any supply chain and logistics company. Although many companies have infrastructure in place, inventory visibility across the organization still eludes most of them. Considering this, transparency and visibility in your organization will be a good area to look into if you want to make a difference and improve productivity. You may consider partnering with a software company to find appropriate tools if developing a software solution is daunting.
Another critical part is analytics. Applying analytics in your supply chain business gives you an edge as it helps you anticipate trends and respond to them quickly. When you invest in analytics to collect data, you can identify key performance indicators and find out drops in demand that may affect your business that will end in significant cost savings.