Optimize Your Retail Supply Chain

In the retail industry, supply chain efficiency is a top priority to ensure products reach customers hands without any issue. From groceries and clothing to consumer electronics and healthcare products, retailers rely on supply chain managers to oversee processes involved with inventory and order management, procurement, or warehousing. These professionals are also responsible for utilizing the latest technology to maximize productivity by streamlining processes.

Without proper supply chain management, operations can create costly delays and potentially drive down the profits and reputation of a retailer. Customers may also purchase from a competitor if backorders or stockouts occur due to these delays. To avoid these incidents, retailers must adapt to ever-growing changes in the economy, tech world, and customer demand to operate successfully.

In this article, we’ll look at solutions that can help businesses overcome the challenges currently impacting retail supply chains.

The Importance of Visibility in Retail Supply Chains

Whether you provide your customers with high-end, luxurious products or affordable goods, their shopping experience is your business’s highest priority. If an item is out of stock or on backorder, the inconvenience will likely drive customers to purchase through a competitor. That’s why it’s crucial for you to have full visibility of your supply chain to optimize inventory management and avoid stockouts or overstocks. Plus, when supply chain managers can clearly analyze the percentage of orders their business can fulfill without running into a stockout, otherwise known as the fill rate, they can use this key performance indicator (KPI) to help reduce lead time while meeting or exceeding customer demand.

Visibility solutions can also impact other areas of supply chains for retail businesses, such as simplifying warehouse operations. Supply chain experts are specially trained to perform their daily functions with ease. However, they’re also capable of making mistakes even when they put their best foot forward. Thankfully, automation minimizes human error by:

• Scanning product barcodes
• Packaging orders
• Labelling boxes
• Collecting accurate data to reduce inventory costs

Customers rely on the efficiency of truck drivers to deliver their orders accurately and on time, every time. If your business manages its own fleet, utilizing advanced tracking systems is crucial in achieving these desired results. Plus, state-of-the-art technology allows businesses to build upon their visibility strategy, adapt to changes in the transportation landscape, and overcome supply chain challenges through route optimization that increases fuel saving costs and minimizes carbon footprints.

Improving Sustainability Without Sacrificing Efficiency

Perhaps one of the largest challenges that retailers face is keeping operations as efficient as possible while maintaining sustainable best practices. Due to constant changes in consumer behavior, retailers are under enormous pressure to deliver high-quality service while keeping costs low to stay profitable. In turn, this can place many vehicles on the road to ensure products reach customer hands as quickly as possible, with more customers opting into same- or next-day delivery. But that’s not all – reverse logistics are also impacted as more people request services to return products or haul away unwanted packaging materials. When looking at the bigger picture, the added labor of completing all these jobs is a good sign for the transportation industry as a whole. However, if improperly managed by supply chain professionals, multiple resources and processes can become wasted over time. These include:

• Fuel
• Charging capacities for commercial electric vehicles (EVs)
• Time spent on the road due to transportation or routing issues
• Lead times
• Money spent on wasted labor
• Stocking delays caused by mismanagement of inventory

So, what can retailers do to keep their supply chains running smoothly with little to no waste? This is where visibility and data analysis come into play. Visibility solutions are designed to streamline warehousing while minimizing inventory costs. However, they are also useful for eliminating waste by offering a real-time view of products as they move along the supply chain.

Retail supply chain managers can improve sustainability at the most basic level by, simply, asking employees for truthful feedback. From conducting routine meetings that discuss the latest company news to handing out survey or providing suggestion boxes around the office, employee criticism is necessary to prevent burnout, turnover, and time or materials from being wasted. We understand getting feedback can be a challenge, so we recommend incentivizing employee evaluations whenever possible.

Prioritizing Customer Security at All Stops

Whether your customers are swiping a credit card or utilizing one of the many app-based payment options available, it’s become more convenient than ever to order a product online or in store. Unfortunately, this comfort comes at a price that has led to an increase in cyberattacks aimed at digital currency. Because both e-commerce storefronts and point-of-sale (POS) systems are susceptible to hacks that can place customers at risk, retailers must stay aware of evolving changes in the digital landscape. That means utilizing the strengths of a stellar information technology (IT) department to analyze, identify, and troubleshoot areas within the supply chain with weakened security that can be manipulated to malfunction by a cybercriminal.

As a retailer, instituting regular security audits can improve firewalls, upgrade encryptions, and prevent hundreds of thousands of dollars from being stolen. Furthermore, it will protect and build trust with your customers, which is, ultimately, the most important factor of staying in business.

Partnering with a 3PL to Minimize Supply Chain Disruption

Running a brick and mortar or e-commerce store involves a lot of supervision across multiple channels to create a seamless shopping experience. From front-end operations that include sales and customer service to back-end functions such as marketing and web design, these processes are executed by professionals to obtain the desired results. Retail supply chains are no different and must have specialists readily available to carry out their specific roles in:

• Manufacturing
• Distribution
• Fulfillment
• Delivery
• Warehousing
• Planning

Keeping track of all of these areas of business can become overwhelming, particularly if a labor or talent shortage has impacted a company. In this case, we advise retailers to partner with a third-party logistics (3PL) provider to stay on top of the supply chain.

When working with a 3PL, retailers can truly focus on their brand while fleet managers and logistics professionals provide full service behind-the-scenes. For example, a third-party logistics provider like Ryder can utilize its expertise in dedicated transportation to build a fleet of commercial vehicles driven by dependable drivers that are trained to be an extension of your business. Plus, 3PLs are equipped with the latest tools in technology to properly scale business operations and give you full control and visibility over your inventory at all times.

From exercise equipment to appliances or furniture, Ryder can also help retailers deliver bulkier items to their customers. In fact, we can fulfill deliveries in as little as two days through our last mile delivery services. Retailers can enhance their supply chain by integrating their warehouses with Ryder’s carriers to provide front door, over the threshold, room of choice, or white glove delivery. However, they can also make their supply chain even more agile by utilizing Ryder’s vast network to increase velocity through forward deployment while minimizing cycle times.