What’s Making Order Fulfillment so Difficult?

More businesses struggle to maintain efficient order fulfillment as the shipping and warehousing industry shifts. Not maintaining an efficient order fulfillment process means lower inventory accuracy, increased downtime, and increased expenses, which can stifle your warehouse’s ability to support demands and ultimately lose customers. Studies show that an estimated 165 billion packages are shipped in the United States each year, and there is a 20% year-over-year increase.

Studies also indicate that 69% of consumers are less likely to shop with a business in the future if a purchase is not delivered within 2 days of the date promised. If shipping demands are rising like this and your business is without an effective order fulfillment process, you could lose customers and diminish productivity. Before implementing solutions that boost the order process, it’s important to be aware of the issues that could cause it. If your business is experiencing one of these challenges, it could be the cause of inefficient fulfillment:

• Long work hours
• Low staffing 
• Increased demand for same-day shipping
• Not engaging with customers
• Stockouts

To simplify order fulfillment, warehouses implement solutions that can efficiently track your inventory to improve accuracy. These include hardware barcode scanning solutions and software that can automate inventory management and improve accuracy to stay ahead of labor shortage and stockout issues. Without solutions that can improve visibility to enhance the order fulfillment process, warehouses have to operate with incomplete visibility of their counts, which can cause unwarranted stockouts to slip under the radar. 

Fortunately, with the Heartland and Honeywell Advantage, you can ease these issues by implementing effective hardware and software solutions that track inventory, improve accuracy, and prevent stockouts. Heartland and Honeywell work to help businesses maintain efficient order fulfillment with these components...

1. Prevent stockouts with a unified hardware and software platform - To meet the challenges of a mobile workforce, Honeywell’s Mobility Edge platform allows for rapid deployments, robust performance, and adaptability to changing demands. Drive faster data capture and secure worker communications with powerful tools that boost inventory management and warehouse efficiency to streamline the order process. Honeywell Mobility Edge validates all your mobile devices, use cases, and software once, and then deploys across multiple devices in multiple form factors for simplified and lower costs. A unified platform that maximizes mobility and communication helps minimize shortage issues and improve employee retention.
   
   
2. A more accurate barcode data capture system - Tracking data and your assets in real-time improves order fulfillment by streamlining accuracy and visibility. If your current barcode solutions cannot efficiently and accurately capture barcodes, the order fulfillment process suffers. Heartland’s barcode hardware solutions empower workers with instant and easy scanning capabilities to give them valuable insights, which helps them make smarter decisions that minimize the impacts of low staffing and stockouts.
   
   
3. Reliable operations with stronger devices - Choosing rugged mobile devices that are built for challenging environments ensures reliable operation even when things get busy. Combine superior scanning and rugged reliability to improve order fulfillment with Heartland and Honeywell.

Efficient order fulfillment starts with implementing solutions that boost inventory accuracy.  Contact us today to see how you can minimize issues that limit the order fulfillment process.