11/23/2023

Conquer eCommerce Peak Season with 3 Proven Strategies

Discover how strategic stock allocation, optimized last-mile delivery, and real-time monitoring can transform your eCommerce peak season logistics.

Whether it's Black Friday, just before Christmas, a heavy promotion, or a new product launch—every eCommerce logistics manager knows that peak season is a significant challenge. Peak seasons can increase the volume of goods you need to process by up to 40%. Many online retailers count on the Holiday bump to meet yearly targets.

So, how do you manage those increased volumes and still get a decent night's sleep?

It all comes down to planning and execution:

Robust inventory management with strong forecasts of likely demand
Strong supply management to take account of lead times and order volumes from manufacturers
Forward-looking capacity management so you have enough resources to receive, store, transport, and manage goods
Optimized order management to fulfill requirements quickly and ensure rapid delivery to customers

Getting these right will directly benefit your online retail or eCommerce business.

Key takeaways

Placing your stock close to customers enables rapid delivery and increases satisfaction during peak season
Optimizing last-mile delivery through strong carrier relationships and a robust 3PL partner is critical for peak season success
Real-time inventory visibility improves peak season efficiency, product availability, and decision-making.
Partnering with an experienced 3PL like GEODIS provides the expertise, network, and technology to easily conquer your peak season challenges

Use these three proven strategies to conquer peak season logistics

At GEODIS, we've been helping our clients meet and defeat peak season challenges for decades. We're sharing three insights to help you plan and execute during the peak season:

Strategic stock allocation
Last-mile delivery
Real-time stock monitoring

These tips will help you optimize your logistics strategy, ensure fast deliveries, prevent stockouts, and increase customer satisfaction. That's particularly important during peak season—low product availability and slow deliveries impacts on customer satisfaction and revenue.

Optimize inventory locations to delight customers with rapid delivery

Happy customers are vital to eCommerce and online retail success. The main areas that create happy customers? Price, product availability, and fast delivery.

Fast, high-quality delivery can be tough during peak seasons.

If you want to optimize your peak-season shipping, then where your inventory is located makes a real difference. You can keep your stock geographically close to your main customer bases so you can provide overnight or two-day shipping. This is all part of your inventory placement strategy—get that right and you'll increase customer satisfaction, win more business, and get repeat orders.

It's a great way to build your peak season competitive advantage. Fulfil orders quickly and efficiently with locally available stock, then rapidly ship products to your customers. The benefits aren't just limited to peak season, either. A year-round inventory placement strategy allows you to move stock to where it's most needed.

Strong sales and demand forecasting are vital to your inventory placement strategy. Understanding where your customers are and what they're likely to buy means you can zero-in on the products that matter. You can keep fast turnover goods close to your customer, while slower-moving inventory can come from an upstream warehouse—which allows you to optimize your storage and delivery costs.

Your inventory placement isn't limited to the US, either. You can place products internationally to improve your eCommerce shipping to global customers. Ultimately, strong inventory placement helps to boost brand awareness and satisfaction thanks to competitive lead times, reduced delivery costs, and maximizing availability through inventory management.

Here at GEODIS, we'll collaborate with you to optimize your inventory placement. We'll use a combination of your sales and demand reports, combined with our own forecasting to get your goods close to your customers. Our extensive warehouse and transport network allows you to place high-demand SKUs while balancing overall storage and fulfillment costs. We'll maximize delivery speed and cost-effectiveness.

Struggling with peak season fulfillment? GEODIS' proven strategies can help you optimize inventory placement, streamline last-mile delivery, and boost customer satisfaction. Take control of your peak season logistics now. Get in touch with GEODIS.

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Ensure seamless last-mile delivery through strategic carrier management

Storing your inventory as close to your customers as possible will reduce the charges you'll pay for last-mile delivery. You can offer customers a wide range of delivery options: home delivery, delivery to a collection point, express delivery, or delivery within one to two days.

Deliveries often involve multiple carriers—based on regional and local networks, carrier rates, and other factors. It's vital to work closely with carriers, monitor their performance, and build a strong business relationship. You will want to hold regular meetings to forecast volumes, review metrics, and keep them informed.

This is especially important during peak season, when you'll want to optimize carrier capacity and availability. Negotiating shipping volumes, pick up times, and delivery requirements before the peak period will help you get good rates.

You might choose to outsource your logistics to a trusted and experienced third-party logistics provider (3PL). A 3PL will work with multiple carriers and networks to negotiate the best prices and manage relationships across the US and around the world. 3PLs often have very strong relationships with carriers, and use their size and scale to reduce rates as much as possible. A strong transportation 3PL will significantly reduce the hassle of managing multiple carriers yourself.

At GEODIS, we're experts in optimizing your transportation and we partner with more than 30,000 carriers across the US. Our long-standing carrier relationships and advanced transportation management systems give you superior last-mile performance at extremely competitive rates. Our dedicated teams closely monitor carrier performance, quickly resolve exceptions, and continuously optimize your carrier mix to reduce your risk and workload.

Ready to conquer peak season logistics challenges? GEODIS provides the expertise, advanced technology, and expansive network you need to streamline operations and delight customers. Contact us to optimize your peak season strategy.

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Get a real-time view of inventory to boost efficiency and improve the customer experience

Real-time inventory visibility and tracking helps you to improve product availability, boost revenue, and make better decisions. It improves eCommerce logistics efficiency and ensures your products are available when and where the customer needs them.

The better you can keep track of inventory turnover, the more easily you can forecast future sales, anticipate demand, and adjust inventory levels. You'll have much better control over your logistics costs and can enhance customer satisfaction through inventory planning and accurate stocktaking.

Technology helps to improve your centralized stock monitoring. Look for efficient warehousing that includes advanced inventory management, demand forecasting, and a strong, integrated warehouse management system. This will reduce errors, enhance, availability, and speed up order fulfillment and delivery.

Real-time inventory monitoring helps you strike the right balance between having enough stock to meet orders and overstocking, which optimizes your storage and inventory costs.

FAQs on optimizing your peak season eCommerce logistics

Placing inventory closer to your key customers allows for faster, more cost-effective delivery during peak periods, increasing satisfaction and loyalty.

Optimizing last-mile delivery through strong carrier relationships and a robust 3PL partnership ensures your ability to meet high demand with rapid, seamless delivery.

Real-time visibility improves decision making, stock management, and overall efficiency, enabling you to meet peak demand while optimizing costs.

GEODIS provides global reach, advanced technology, logistics expertise, and a customer-centric approach to help you conquer peak season challenges and achieve your goals.

How GEODIS can help

GEODIS is a global leader in supply chain optimization, with the expertise, network, and technology to help you conquer peak season challenges. Here's how we can support your success:

Strategic inventory placement across our network of 165 contract logistics warehouses with over 50 million square feet of space
Optimized last-mile delivery through strong relationships with 30,000+ national and regional carriers
Real-time inventory visibility and advanced technology for improved efficiency and decision making
Ability to reach 99.5% of the continental U.S. in two days or less from our strategically located facilities
Comprehensive supply chain solutions including transportation, warehousing, freight forwarding, and value-added services
Trusted by leading brands to manage over 50 million shipments and fulfill over 60 million direct-to-consumer orders annually
A customer-centric approach focused on understanding your unique needs and tailoring solutions to drive your peak season success

Contact us today to discover how our proven peak season strategies can optimize your logistics performance and delight your customers.

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Paola Verhulsel

Logistics Engineer for GEODIS Contract Logistics

Paola VERHULSEL is a Logistics Engineer for the GEODIS Contract Logistics business line in Europe. She is responsible for carrying out technical studies for RFQs, or for re-designing existing projects. By offering innovative and cost-effective solutions, Paola VERHULSEL uses her expertise to assist customers and operations, to help them conquer new markets.

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