Welcome To The Ecommerce Uncovered Podcast

In this episode of the Ecommerce Uncovered Podcast Jeremy welcomes back co-host Paul to discuss the 15 key things to consider for your online business for peak season. For Jeremy and Paul peak season is Q4 from Cyber Week to Christmas and the season is expanding.

Jeremy and Paul discuss why planning early is essential to success and why speaking to your customers and carriers prior to peak can give you a headstart in the industry. Understand that changes to systems and processes must be tested and inplace before you get into your peak season and that organic growth should be factored in your plan.

Jeremy talks about the need for an organised Carrier pick up, schedule and volume capacity and why managing your staff resources and employee morale has an effect of your business's reputation. Understand the need for inbound and outbound goods forecasting and how to ensure your internal systems work for the volumes you are expecting during peak.

Find out why warehouse space can be crucial to success, when planning for incoming and outgoing stock and why you must always have contingencies in place to make sure any problems you incur during peak season are resolved quickly,

Key Takeaways

• Start To Plan Now - A sufficient plan in place to handle to peak volume
• Carriers - Logistics for your carriers
• Staff Resource - Have you got enough staff to deal with the increase in volume
• Identify The Current Weaknesses In Your Operation
• Inbound Goods - Ensuring you have the goods available for peak
• Outbound Process - Ensure its streamlined, scheduled and forecasted
• Planning Your Space - Prepare enough space to deal with demand
• Problem Solving Channel - An efficient way of solving any issues
• Consumables - Ensuring smaller items such as labels are in stock
• Promotion Planning - The offers your running
• Systems - having the hardware and software in place for a busier period and why you should always stress test the systems
• Disaster Recovery Contingency - Plans for systems failure
• Prior Years - Lessons learned during past peaks
• Weather - Consider how the weather could affect your business
• Returns Policy - Processing returns after peak slows down

BEST MOMENTS

"If you get behind you might never catch up"

"During peak season every little things helps"

"Have a really slick, easy to learn process so you can drop in extra resources"

"Everything will be put under pressure and strain during a peak season and it's the weak areas that will break first"

"There's a chain reaction when you start to move stock, all those things have to be harmonious in order to succeed"

VALUABLE RESOURCES

www.ecommerceuncovered.co.uk

www.corefulfilemt.com

ABOUT THE HOSTSPaul Burns and Jeremy Vernon are Directors of eCommerce fulfilment business Core Fulfilment, with a decade of experience providing fulfilment services to leading brands such as Disney and WWF.

Paul and Jeremy's mission is to make eCommerce fulfillment as simple as possible, to help businesses grow, and to provide the highest level of service, irrelevant of order volumes. For Paul and Jeremy is all about people.