All That You Desired to Know Regarding Fulfillment for ECommerce

The fulfillment for eCommerce is the central part of your eCommerce sales chain that helps you deliver your products to customers. Basically, e-Commerce fulfillment is a comprehensive process involving activities ranging from receiving orders to documenting, picking, packing, and finally shipping of items through third-party logistics of global recognition. Simply put, in the beginning, while most online retail houses were used to maintain inventory while packing boxes in their workshop like a garage, etc., as they grow with millions of customers across the globe, they consider outsourcing their order fulfillment third-party logistics company or 3PL.

The consistency and similarity of predictable and accurate order fulfillment is the success key to keep customers happy, earn positive reviews, and multiply the market. A well-planned and professionally managed eCommerce fulfillment not only saves your money, time but equally helps your online retail business project operate seamlessly with increased market reach. To make this monumental project success, working with a specialized eCommerce fulfillment service provider should be your first priority that helps make your business lively and agile. Here’ we are going to discuss the four basic elements of the e-commerce fulfillment process:

Receiving

Having inventory in hand is essential to fulfill orders coming through your retail business partner. On receipt of the pallets, items are documented, logged in inventory, stored on the shelves, and other kinds of storage units. Since you are equipped with a professional fulfillment for eCommerce partner, maintaining inventory is essential to take care of fulfilling orders from your trusted associate.

Inventory storage

Inventory storage, which is widely known as warehousing involves effective organization as well as storage of the shipments, which should be done proficiently by your outsourced partner. To undertake your larger online operation successfully, the fulfillment point should have a large-scale storage arrangement combining with bins, shelves, high-tech mobile shelving systems, and also pallets. Appropriate inventory storage is essential to keep merchandise secure, protected, which offers higher visibility to understand what is available in stock or for the execution of order while which are about to finish. This helps in maintaining high-class integration among the retail stores and its 3L partner.

Order processing

As orders continue to come, they need to get processed keeping the same speed. This processing job involves 3 vital steps including picking, packing, and getting them ready for shipping to customers. Each material packed and ready for ship should be included with a slip explaining the warehouse location, quantities apart from instructions like the kind of packaging material used including boxes, ploy bags, packing tape, bubble mailers, bubble wrap – or using customized packaging that reaches end customers in undamaged condition. Finally, shipping labels should be affixed to the package.

Shipping

Immediately on the processing of the order and labeling is done, it needs to be shipped. This process of shipping usually includes global courier companies like UPS Store, DHL service, or its equivalent and once it’s shipped, the retail shop is sent the tracking info which can equally be shared with customers enabling them to track their deliveries.

Return processing

Whereas a customer returns an order, they are shipped directly to the fulfillment for an eCommerce service provider or the retailing point where it needs to be evaluated. Based on the cause of return, item quality, and the return policy of the retainer company, the item may be restocked as obtainable inventory or discarded due to faulty.

ePakShip is a fulfillment center located in Lexington, KY offering order fulfillment services such as pick, pack, ship, inventory management, warehousing, shopping cart integration, and so on. To know more, visit https://epakship.com/about/.

What Do Roulette and Your Customer Surveys Have in Common?

We all know the gambling game, Roulette. You place a bet and a wheel containing 37 slots is spun and a ball added. The wheel spins and spins until it comes to a stop and the ball falls randomly into one of the slots. But how many times do you have to spin the wheel to obtain an equal probability that the numbers 0 – 36 appear? The answer is around 1500 spins (calculated using fancy statistics)! Although this problem is based around Roulette, we can apply the same principles to business.

For example, how many surveys will your company have to send out to get a good representation from each of your customer target demographics? Or to put it in a more scientific way, how many surveys will you have to send out to get an equal representation of returned surveys from all demographics.

We can break this problem down into its component parts. Let’s say your company appeals to two age demographics: 18-30 and 30-40 years old. In addition to this, both men and women use your products and you have customers in 20 London postcodes. That means you have:

2 x Age demographics

2 x Gender demographics

20 x Postcodes demographics

Totalling 80 unique demographics!

So if you assume that each demographic is equally as likely to return these surveys, then you would have to send out over 5000 surveys to get a good return! By good return, I, of course, mean an equal return rate across all demographics.

But why is it so important to obtain an equal representation from each demographic? If you were to ask one person what their favourite film is, would that be a fair reflection on what everybody’s favourite film is? Of course not. If you were to ask, say 1000 people what their favourite film is, this may give you a better idea of what the most popular films are. With the example above, one male 25-year-old customer from NW4 may not reflect the views of every male under 40 living in NW4.

Using scientific principles to design business strategies will allow you to make predictions on the outcome of these strategies. Such thinking will help you make better business decisions, as in the case above, where you will know prior to sending out surveys, how many you will need to send out to get a good representation from each demographic.

Using Vinyl Banners to Advertise

When choosing to advertise your business or project there are a variety of options on how to go about it. Options like TV ads, radio commercials, social media campaigns, and newspaper articles can take a lot out of your budget. One option that has proven to be successful time and time again is custom banners.

Most people are probably thinking, “Banners are better than Facebook?” and while that depends on what you are advertising and how much you have to spend, banners can a successful as well as cost efficient option for your business. I would highly recommend them for small businesses that thrive off of a local clientele.

Custom banners are highly durable yet can easily be removed and used over and over again. There are multiple ways to install them and most will come with grommets so you can easily attach them wherever you like without damaging the banner itself. For the banner to be successful, placement is key! If you are using it in front of your business, be sure it can be seen from afar and there are no trees or anything blocking the view for those driving by. Using a spot light at night may also be a good idea so customers can locate you.

Due to the fact that banners are made with vinyl, it is easy to create a fun, vibrant banner. Vinyl decals that are used for the lettering come it a variety of colors and can be cut to just about any size or shape. When designing your banner, it is important to keep in mind that you want the lettering to stand out and also be easily readable from afar. Picking a detailed script font may not be the best option. Also, make sure your colors pop, putting yellow lettering on a white background can make it very hard to read, however if you use a black background the yellow will really stand out.

Graphics are also key and can be what sets your banner apart from the others. Be sure your image is eye grabbing but not so distracting that it takes away from the information you’re trying to get out there. Many sign shops have the capability of printing out multi-colored images (much like you printed them off on your home computer) giving you the opportunity to use your own graphics and logos without having to simplify them.

One of my favorite things about using banners is their versatility. If you want to hang it on the side of your building, you can do that. If you go to trade shows often or are setting up booths banners are great options for that as well in that they can easily be moved around and folded up when you’re ready to go!

No matter what your business, custom banners are a simple, cost efficient option to help advertise your business. From their versatility to the wide range of design options, they are truly a great option for all your signage needs.

Find Out Why MNCs Are Spending Fortunes on Improving Their People’s Communication Skills

“You can have brilliant ideas, but if you can’t get them across, your ideas won’t get you anywhere.”

– Lee Iacocca

Communication in personal and work life is crucial to one’s development and growth. Even the worst ideas communicated effectively are likely to score better than brilliant ideas which are not put across with due emphasis.

Imagine a sales person calling up a prospect. He/she calls up and informs the potential customer at the other end about a newly launched product or service. He/she, however, doesn’t sound very confident about the product/service and also fails to answer queries raised by the person at the other end. Now you tell me this thing: would this sales person be able to close a deal? Would this person be able to meet or exceed the targets set by the company he/she works in?

Herein this post, we are going to talk about what it takes to excite a potential customer and successfully closing a deal.

No matter how deeply a sales person understands his products and/or services, if he cannot communicate well, chances are he would fail a lot more than he would succeed. Good communication helps a sales person build a quick rapport with the customer which means he has a better chance to persuade the customer to consider the product and/or service on offer. This is why smart companies, MNCs, are investing substantial amount of efforts in training their people. They are increasingly leveraging the benefits that training programs for employees entail.

Training programs for employees that are customized to empower attendees communicate more effectively are either arranged internally or through outside resources – training companies. In the in-house training model, senior level managers take up the task to educate the participants in the art of building relationships with the customers through effective communication. They may also be trained on selling skills, which go hand in hand with the communication skills. When companies look outside for training needs, they look for professional training companies which are experienced in imparting proven training programs for employees or management skills training programs.

Professional end-to-end training program companies conduct needs diagnostic studies to get an idea about the training needs of the employees so that they can customize their communication training programs for employees. These companies also measure the impact of their trainings once the programs are done with, and employees get back to their usual work life. Training programs for employees are not anew; they have been in existence for decades. The modern day training programs, however, are more scientific and result oriented in their approach.

The Innovative Leader: Skills and Strategies

Challenging circumstances and complex issues face every leader today, no matter the organization or environment. These circumstances and issues give rise to ever-increasing demands for leaders who have the capability to innovate.

Leaders who innovate see the bigger picture, grasp the entire situation including all the variables that may come their way. This means they have the capacity to think differently about their organization, they have the skills which allow them to bring new ideas and energy to their role, to address challenging situations and find solutions to complex issues. As a result, they bring more innovation into the entire organization.

Skills:

Innovative leaders have powerful imaginations, they challenge everything, looking where others have not looked. They constantly ask, ‘What if?’ And because they do, they find new opportunities and take reasonable and appropriate risks. An XBInsight survey of over 5,000 CEOs worldwide found innovative leaders are more successful than non-innovative leaders as a result of five key competencies. The survey found innovative leaders are better able to manage risk and seize opportunities. They demonstrate curiosity, lead courageously, and maximize a strategic business perspective.

Because they have excellent communication skills, innovative leaders generate enthusiasm for opportunities, motivating and inspiring others to collaborate with them and take the needed risks. They apply emotional intelligence to their everyday lives, continually building relationships with team members, colleagues, and bosses. They have confidence in their team, recognize and support creativity in the team, and the ability of them to work together effectively on implementation strategies.

Finally, innovative leaders are tuned in to the details of a situation and its effect on the organization. They dig down to seek out new patterns and consider new points of view. They are willing to change their perspective, challenging their own previously held convictions.

Strategies:

Innovation is about implementation. Without implementation, innovation is creativity – the generation of new ideas, something new without the application – non quantifiable, minimal risk, and no investment. Kouzes and Posner, in their book, The Leadership Challenge, encourage leaders to challenge the status quo by searching for opportunities, experimenting, and taking risks. They suggest leaders ask themselves:

  • What can be challenged?
  • What needs to be improved?
  • What can I learn?

To drive innovation in your organization, consider applying the following five strategies.

1. Increase your knowledge from a variety of sources.

Innovation is based on knowledge. Therefore, you need to continually expand your knowledge base. Read things you don’t normally read. Think about your personal experiences. Is there knowledge or skills you can apply to being innovative at work? What are your interests, hobbies, or volunteer activities? Do you play the piano, are you a gourmet chef, do you write short stories? Thinking about personal experiences may help you to tap into other knowledge and expertise and leverage them at work.

2. Treat patterns as part of the problem.

Sometimes we rely on previous experience to determine our next steps and we fall into a pattern of behaviour. Reach out to team members, colleagues, and bosses to test out your innovation plans. Are you relying on previous experience only to develop your solution? Are you spending time to reflect on the justification of your assumptions, beliefs and values?

3. Turn off idea generation and work on implementation.

Creativity is the process for generating ideas, lots of ideas. But at some point, you need to stop, step back, and decide on which idea to implement. Innovation is about actually working the idea, implementing and executing in order to bring the idea to life.

4. Foster an innovative environment.

Involve your team in your innovation decisions. Communicate and collaborate with them. Part of your role as a leader is to encourage the creativity of those who report to you. Make sure they have the tools they need to create and adapt to change. You do not need to, or should you, do this alone. That is why you have a team. Be a courageous change agent by trusting yourself to trust and lean on others. As you build your innovation skills and expertise, your team should be building theirs as well.

5. Evaluate, revise, repeat.

As with any change, it’s critical to evaluate the result. Ask yourself, and your team, what has been learned from the experience? Did anything occur that was not expected? What would we do differently? What could we have done better? Document your findings and apply them to the next situation that needs innovative thinking.

Innovation is not about the past but rather, visualizing a desired future state. The goal of innovation is to find a better way.

Fraudulent Tranfer of Assets

When creating an asset protection plan one must be extremely careful to transfer the assets prior to any problem (such as a lawsuit) occurring. The reason for this is rule is stated below.

A fraudulent transfer of assets occurs when assets are transferred with the intention of ‘hindering delaying or defrauding’ your creditors. If a transfer is determined to be fraudulent a court will unwind it. Asset protection plans that are created and executed years in advance of need will survive any creditor attack. You should not wait for a problem to arise and then consider creating an asset protection plan.

Asset protection plans must be structured and implemented years in advance of any potential problem. If a plan is set up the day after a judgment the plan has no value. A court may also apply the Badges of Fraud in determining if the transfer was fraudulent. It is difficult to prove your intent. So the badges of fraud are used to try and sort things out. When an individual or business attempts to hide assets which are the subject of a debt collection, divorce, or bankruptcy case, a Court will look for badges of fraud. The badges of fraud for fraudulent asset transfers are:

• A Close Relationship Between The Parties

• A Transfer Apart from the Regular Course Of Business

• Inadequate Consideration

• Knowledge Of A Creditor’s Claim

• Retention Of Control Of The Property

If the badges of fraud are found to be true then the court may move to have the assets placed back into the hands of the original owner where the creditors can move to attach the asset. That is why it is important to set up an asset protection plan in advance.

The Most Common Text Errors in Brochures and Catalogs

The most frequent errors at the level of text that are given in a brochure or catalog have to do with a number of words that are used and with orthographic, grammatical and lexical questions.

Volume of text

Although we have already commented on more than one occasion, in the advertising texts it has to be brief and concise. You have to get to the point and stop going about the same idea. To achieve this, the sentences have to condense to the maximum the message that we want to convey to the audience. The golden rule is not to saturate the reader or give too many elements that can lend themselves to confusion.

It is shown that attention can only be captured between the first three and five seconds. Therefore, when you really want the reader to read the diptych or triptych completely, nothing is better than going straight to highlight the main thing about that product and/or service that is being offered, leaving aside other information that is not of interest.

Writing errors

Parallel to the amount of text that we are going to incorporate in the brochures and catalogs that we will end up printing, it is important to pay special attention to orthographic, grammatical and lexical questions. Here are the most common ones.

1. Spelling level

There is a bad habit of putting the first letter of the year in capital letters. Orthographically it is incorrect because it has no logic at all when it is in the middle of a sentence and it is not the beginning of any or it does not come after a period.

Another of the frequent errors is the incorrect use of abbreviations. The only ones that are admitted are those that correspond to units of measurement or chemical elements since they are subject to the norms of the international system. However, it is customary to write them with a dot, when in fact, they do not carry it.

A common mistake found in many advertising graphic media is to misuse punctuation marks, for example, both linguistic and non-linguistic uses of the comma and dot. One of the most common examples is to write the hours using the comma when you have to put it with a colon or with a period.

2. Grammar level

The most common mistake is not to put the article on the subject perhaps because of the influence exerted by the English language. It should not be forgotten that the tendency in recent years seems to be marked by the presence, more and more frequent, of bilingual publications, a tendency that is also moving to the advertising field.

It is important to be careful when forming the plurals and especially to make the concordances with the verbs. As a rule, it never ends well and is a grammatical fault that must always be avoided.

3. Lexical level

It is important not to fall into the use of extra Jeri MOS. The same happens with other words like “snack” or “pack” that in the first case means “appetizer” and in the second, ” the extra Jeri MOS.

The use of has given way to creating new terms that did not exist to date and that the advertising has been incorporating. For example, the term “accommodation” which means action and effect of accommodating, is being used incorrectly instead of “accommodation”, which would be the correct word in this case.

It is essential, therefore, that when writing the texts there is always a person who understands the subject who can review them before they are considered good and send the brochure or catalog to the press.

Impact of Rising Gas Prices on Meetings and Events

Gas prices are rising. According to the Los Angeles Times, gas prices were the highest in the nation yesterday at $3.85 per gallon. Airlines are raising their rates and President Obama is considering tapping into the national oil reserves. With unrest in the Middle East continuing, it is uncertain when gas prices will return to “normal”.

How will this impact meetings and what can a planner do? In general, this will mean that less people will attend meetings because they will be unable to justify the cost. Here are some tips that planners can use to help their attendees take the sting out travel.

  1. Encourage Your Attendees to book their flights NOW. Even if your conference is in the 3rd or 4th quarter of this year, it will be in your attendees best interest to lock in their rate now. Going to TripAdvisor or Kayak can compare airlines, dates of travel, and the attendee can receive an alert if fares go down. As the event planner, it might be in the best interest of you and your staff to start sending alerts out to the attendees when you see low fares.
  2. Consider alternate methods of transportation. We Americans only usually travel by air or by car. But there are other ways to get from Point A to Point B, that may be just as economical, but may take just a little more time. I recently found a bus service called Megabus, which has limited service around the US. Consider Amtrak as well.
  3. Make sure the ROI is sound. When justifying the event or conference to upper management, travel will be a piece of the puzzle. Put a ROI calculator on your website. Email attendees about the calculator. Get the conference services staff involved. One meeting planner recently shared with me that the conference costs were not the inhibitor, it was the travel costs that management wasn’t approving.
  4. Get creative with Sponsorships and sell more of them. If you think there is any way to lower the registration cost of the conference to the attendee, do it. Consider selling sponsorship space in unique spaces such as computer kiosks and other conference equipment rental units.
  5. Consider regional meetings. If you think one big annual meeting will not draw the attendees due to rising airline fares, consider breaking the meeting up into 4 or 5 regional meetings. I know this isn’t the optimal solution for association meetings, but it does allow the education and networking to go on.
  6. Provide carpooling options. Be proactive on your website, in your emails, on your social media outlets, that you will help attendees find carpools. Try creative outreach methods, such as “Is the only thing keeping you from our meeting, the price of gas?” Have interns within your organization call potential attendees and ask if they need a ride.
  7. Consider Hybrid Meetings. Part-live and part-virtual, hybrid meetings allow the attendee to sit at home or in the office and see and/or participate in the event. Many event planners are already planning hybrid meetings for 2011, but the demand may increase if gas prices continue to rise.

Shipping Materials – Time to Cut Out the Cost of Shipping the Material Itself

If you are a purchaser at Amazon perhaps you’ve answered a couple of surveys and feedback questions about packaging; was the size of the package right, was the merchandise protected, etc.? Obviously, shippers are trying to reduce costs and Amazon Prime is trying to reduce its shipping costs too, as well they should, remember efficiency means higher profits, but let’s take this conversation to a higher level shall we?

You see, there was a worthy article in the Wall Street Journal titled; “Bubble Wrap Is Losing Its Pop,” by Loretta Chao published on July 2, 2015. There is also a brilliant YouTube video by the same title you can watch online (Wall Street Journal YouTube Channel). The YouTube video description states: “Sealed Air Corp. has revamped its iconic Bubble Wrap. The new product dubbed iBubble Wrap looks like the traditional packaging material but there’s one catch: it doesn’t pop,” and the video states the new material ships ‘flat’ without air at 50-times the width on the role, meaning 50-times more product can ship out prior to use. WSJ article states that, shippers can pump the air in On-Site as needed, saving the shipping and logistics costs for the iBubble Wrap.

This is a brilliant innovation for the shipping industry and will save shippers millions of dollars, and cut down on the need for huge buildings and rooms to store it all.

Oh, and by the way, while I am still on this topic; it’s time to redesign cardboard too, it needs to use 30-50% material but remain the same to better strength – it can be done, needs to be done, and there is a shortage of cardboard for recycling and it is quite costly too. Not to mention the trees. This was actually a subject of dialogue at one of our recent think tank meetings. Why you ask? Simple, we will have to cut down fewer trees, send less recycled cardboard to China and also have the contents safer meaning less breakage and fewer returns for shippers, online retailers, manufacturers and the gifts you send out during Christmas.

Each rendition of the iPhone we expect improvements right? Sure, but what about the packaging it is shipped in, the packaging and boxes everything seems to be shipped in, what has changed? Sure a few changes but if you went to sleep 30-years ago and woke up living as homeless person in a cardboard box you’d still feel right at home, nothing has changed, so get your mind out of the gutter and start thinking beyond chanty town.

Insights About Utilizing Professional Collection Services For Defaulted Accounts

Business owners rely on clients to pay their bills. When customers default on financial obligations, the owner of the business suffers monetarily. Collecting on a bad debt can be particularly challenging if the person who owes it refuses to communicate with the company or fails to uphold his or her payment arrangement. Because you may have other tasks that need to be focused on at your company, you might find it better to hand off delinquent accounts to professional recovery services. You may be convinced by considering some of the advantages about this option.

Freeing Up Resources to Run Your Business

You and your company’s staff may face any number of duties each day. Despite those customers of yours who defaulted on their accounts, you still must take care of existing and new clients who come into your business. When you spend time chasing down defaulted accounts, you might risk the relationship you are trying to build with those customers who do pay their bills on time.

You also might not have the resources to hire staff just for the sole purpose of collecting on past obligations. Hiring new workers can be expensive if you must train them and also keep them employed after accounts have been settled. Rather than tie up resources for hiring such workers, you may find it better to let a professional recovery service contact those in default for you.

The service typically utilizes a number of different collection remedies for bad debts. You can find out more about each of them when you visit the service’s online location. You may be able to tailor services that match your collection needs and also get the help at a cost that your company will find reasonable.

Collection Methods

Collectors who go after bad accounts use a number of different approaches. The first approach may involve calling the people who owe money and seeing if they want to set up a payment arrangement. Many people are eager to make monthly payments that can fit within their budgets. Over the course of a few months, you might have the entire amount recouped and submitted to you in full.

A collector who is unsuccessful in setting up an arrangement may then try to pursue several legal avenues. The first avenue involves getting a judgment in court to seize a debtor’s assets like wages or bank accounts if applicable The second avenue involves stopping any services that the person still receives from your company. These actions might be enough to convince the person to make payments or settle the account entirely.

Much of the action that you can take, however, is determined by the laws in your area. Some laws allow for garnishment for medical bills, but not for credit card bills, for example. The service you hire to collect for you might know the laws that pertain to the matter.

Collecting debts can be time consuming and costly. You may need help resolving the issue afford-ably and easily. You can find out more about the options available to you by getting a free quote for debt collectors and other information.

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