Pick & Ship

Can You Afford to Lose One Unsatisfied Customer? If you think the answer is yes, think again!

Lets assume a customer is unsatisfied because he received a shipment from you with the wrong item enclosed.   What is the cost to your business of that one unsatisfied customer?  Is it the loss of that customer?  The restocking fee associated with the return of a product?  The labor costs associated with phone calls to deal with that unsatisfied or irate customer?  Does it frustrate you to think about the potential loss of that one customer?  If yes, hold onto your hat, because you have only realized a small part of the full financial impact of that order fulfillment mistake.

What loss really occurs when an unsatisfied customer decides to no longer do business with you?  Consider this: What is the average Lifetime Value of your customer? To calculate this figure, determine the average dollar value of a sale.  Assuming your business model involves repeat business, calculate the average number of times a customer may order from you over their lifetime.  If you have no real data for this, provide a conservative guestimate.  So you should now have:

$ Per Order X  # of lifetime orders = ?

But theres more to the equation.  On average, a satisfied customer may tell two other customers to use your service.  On the other hand, an unsatisfied customer is likely to tell an average of 6 people about their negative experience with your service!  Thats means up to 8 more customers are lost as a result of that one unsatisfied customer.  (i.e., You will lose the 2 new customer referrals, and potentially, another 6 customers will never use your services.)  You will need to enter this factor into your calculations.   So lets answer the question again using some sample data.  Lets assume you are an online jewelry outlet and your average sale is conservatively estimated at $50 per order.  In addition, you believe a person may order from you 20 times in their life.  Your calculations would look like this: $50 X 20 = $1000 lifetime value X 8 additional lost sales (from word of mouth) = +/- $8,000 potential LOSS resulting from just ONE lost customer

The multiplier effect can be exponential simply due to order fulfillment mistakes.  You may never look at order fullfilment error costs the same again.  And that is a GOOD THING for your business.  These are potentially the most expensive hidden costs in any order picking operation and these are the costs that can make the difference between a business that is profitable over the long term and one that is not.  You can chose how you want to run your business today and begin making changes to insure order accuracy.

If you are serious about significantly decreasing your picking errors, please give us a call.  Our ReadyToShip picking solution will make all the difference, because you cant afford to lose one customer.

Reduce Errors

Improve Picking Time

Increase Repeat Business

Decrease Lost Sales

Easy To Learn & Use

Let us help you discover a better way to run your picking operation

Youll be glad you did!

How to Reduce Your Direct Picking Costs

Manual picking can be slow, error prone, expensive and frustrating. Or it can be fast, accurate, low cost and easy. So what makes the difference? A little thinking and the right tools make the difference. Think about these questions for a moment:

• Is your picking operation cost too high?
• Could it and should it be lower?
• How low could your cost be if everything were perfect?
• What kind of savings could be found in your current manual picking operation?
• How close can you come to that perfect process and those reduced costs?

Lets take a moment to find out!

(Note: Please also refer to article entitled The Hidden Costs of Picking.)

Do you do Batch Picking? Batch picking is defined as picking more than one order during a pass through the warehouse. Batch picking implies that while you are picking for one order, you are walking past the pick locations for other orders. Why not pick for those order during your trip through a warehouse. To achieve this process, your pick list must be sorted by bin location to avoid back tracking.*

How long does it take to Organize a Batch Pick? If you are doing or considering batch picking, how long does it take a picker (or worse yet a supervisor) to organize a batch? If it takes more than 30 seconds, there are better ways. It can be done more quickly without supervisor involvement.*

Shortcomings of Paper Pick Lists? Printed pick lists are generally organized and used in one of two ways, each of them having drawbacks.

1. Pick All Now, Sort & Verify Later The pick list can be sorted by the preferred path through the warehouse. Next to each item is the quantity and ID of the items to be picked. All the items picked go into one carton and are later sorted. Problem: This makes for fast picking, but requires an additional step in the process to sort and separate the orders.

2. Pick & Sort Now, Verify Later The pick list is again sorted by the preferred path as identified above. For each item, the distribution of the item to the orders in the batch is shown. The picker puts the items into a separate box for each order. Problem: This is very error prone. The real drawback to paper pick lists is that each item is not verified as it is picked. Verification is done at the end of the process, often resulting in more rework, costing you time and money. Scanner based batch picking can eliminate these drawbacks of paper-based pick lists. Do your Pickers Back Track? If yes, this is costing you money! Walking is not productive; you want to keep it to a minimum.*

Do you need to Sort or Verify after Picking? If you are not sorting or verifying while picking, then you need to do it before shipping. One person packs the order and a second person verifies that the right products and quantity are being shipped. Problem: More labor hours/costs.*

An affordable, scanner based picking system can achieve great benefits in reducing your direct costs. Batch picking systems using a hand held computer with bar code scanning can make batch picking accurate and fast.

Dont have bar coding? No problem.

Coding of only the item or the bin works fine with ReadyToShip; and if you dont have it, we can help.

An Affordable, No Hassle Solution: The ReadyToShip Batch Picking System.

• Batches can be built in a few seconds.
• There is no paper to get lost or damaged.
• Each item is verified when it is picked; no additional verification process is required
• Items are sorted while they are being picked; no additional sort process is required
• Pickers do not need to know the products; the bar codes uniquely identify them. A temp or part time picker can often pick as fast as an experienced picker. In fact you can get accurate picking with lower cost pickers. Adding new items doesnt cause confusion and slow things down.
• ReadyToShip allows you to sort according to the path you want rather than by the location ID, if needed.
• Easy to learn and use.

If you are serious about getting your picking process costs under control, give us a call. We are here to help you. We will be happy to help you identify your current costs (direct and indirect) and evaluate how the ReadyToShip picking solution can quickly and easily help reduce those costs.

Reduce Errors
Improve Picking Time
Increase Repeat Business
Decrease Lost Sales
Easy To Learn & Use
Let us help you discover a better way to run your picking operation
Youll be glad you did!

Integrating ReadyToShip into YOUR Business We Make it EASY for You

INTRODUCTION

Dont let perceived technical concerns hold you back from implementing ReadyToShip and realizing all its amazing benefits. Integration is generally quite simple, and we work with you throughout the install and startup process to ensure a smooth transition. ReadyToShip was designed to be easily installed, configured and learned. We will get you up and running quickly, with minimum fuss and with little impact on how you run your business. Our focus is to provide you with an accurate, fast picking solution and we pride ourselves in helping make it easy for you.

The concerns we hear most frequently are about Bar Coding, Host System Interface and RF. Lets explore these topics and answer some common questions that arise.

BAR CODES

Are bar codes required, and if we dont have them can we still use ReadyToShip?

ReadyToShip delivers the most accurate picking if each item to be picked is imprinted with a bar code. For many ReadyToShip users, the products that are to be picked arrive from a supplier or from manufacturing already bar coded. If your products are not bar coded, we will work with you to put in place the best strategy to make ReadyToShip work for you.

At the start of a picking session, the picker associates each order with a box or tote or cart shelf by alternately scanning the order ID and the box, tote or shelf ID. Many host systems can print out the customer order with the Order ID bar coded. (If it can not, the picker can enter the Order ID manually and since this only has to be done once per order, this takes little time.) The (reused) box, tote or shelf only has to be labeled once and we will work with you or even provide labels for you to use.

And dont worry about what bar code symbology is used. The scanners we specify can read all symbologies you are likely to encounter.

Except in special circumstances, the pick locations do not need to be bar coded. The warehouse should be laid out so that when the scanner shows the picker a pick location, he/she can find it easily. The locations can be labeled with printed labels or simply with a magic marker.

In short, the bar coding needed by ReadyToShip can be put in place easily and quickly and
Reduce Errors

Improve Picking Time

Increase Repeat Business

Decrease Lost Sales

Easy To Learn & Use

Let us help you discover a better way to run your picking operation

• we will work with you to make that happen. HOST SYSTEM How do you pull orders out of the order system and into ReadyToShip? For each order that is to be picked, ReadyToShip requires at least the Item ID and quantity for each order line. This information can be pushed to ReadyToShip by the Host System or pulled from the Host System by ReadyToShip. IHS Software will work with you to determine the best method this is part of our expertise. We have yet to find a system we could not work with and generally the solution is pretty simple, robust and easy to understand. RF SYSTEM How is information communicated and is WiFi easy to set up? ReadyToShip uses standard RF Networks to communicate order and picking information. Such networks are often referred to as WiFi or Access Point implemented networks. These are very common today, relatively inexpensive and easy to set up. But if they are new to you, IHS Software, LLC will work with you to install the RF Network.

Youll be glad you did!