Most small businesses think their courier service is solely responsible for the speed of their deliveries, and this is true – for the most part. Once those deliveries are out of your hands, there’s really nothing else you can do to influence speed. But what about before they leave your premises? Many small businesses forget they can have a huge impact on delivery times by simply dispatching goods faster – and that requires an efficient business inventory and storage system.
Here’s a few tips on how to speed up small business deliveries by moving your business inventory faster.
Organise your stock
Nothing slows retailers down more than untidy stock. Imagine this; you receive an order, you’re not entirely sure where to locate the product, and after wasting time searching you realise the goods aren’t in stock. Consequently, the paying customer will be left waiting for you to receive the goods before their order can be fulfilled. It’s really not a good look!
An organised and tidy storage system means retailers can instantly pick those orders off the shelves and easily see when stocks are running low.
Communication is key
Even small businesses can find themselves bound by internal processes, and wherever there’s process, breakdowns are possible. For example, there may be different employees (or departments) handling incoming orders and dispatching products which means extra care needs to be taken to ensure orders are fulfilled with accurate information while none slip through the cracks.
So, make sure communication between different business functions is instantaneous and failsafe from the moment an order is received. That means no handwritten notes left on anyone’s desk!
Choose the right courier service to cater for your needs
Indeed, there’s nothing you can do to speed up deliveries once you’ve handed them over to the courier, but the buck stops with the retailer when it comes to choosing the right type of service in the first place.
Small business deliveries are often best served by new, flexible crowd-sourced delivery solutions that offer cost-effective same-day deliveries. By engaging a point-to-point delivery model, these services can immediately handle both small and large quantities of deliveries without your goods being reprocessed at third-party fulfillment centres.
Streamline internal processes
Paperwork and clunky systems can be a real killer when it comes to dispatching your business’ inventory in the fastest time. The best advice here is to simply get rid of paperwork and look for automation wherever you can get it.
Finding a courier solution that will enable you to upload delivery details electronically will certainly help you on your way. With Go People, you’ll even find a plugin for Shopify which automatically passes order information to the Go People platform without any manual intervention.
Organise your deliveries
This is an easy one to overlook. Once you’ve picked and packed the product and booked your delivery, you might think your job is done. In fact, Go People’s routing algorithms will calculate the fastest delivery route for runners before they arrive at your business to pick up the goods. That means you can ensure every delivery is correctly labelled and appropriately ordered before they arrive so no time is wasted.