It’s not a secret that peak season can be a stressful time for retailers. This year is shaping up to be no exception. Supply chain congestion and labor shortages throughout the year have made it harder to secure certain products and get orders to customers quickly — and the holiday order surge hasn’t even hit yet.

Don’t expect customers to be too forgiving. Thanks to industry giants like Amazon, customers have learned to expect same-day or next-day delivery at the click of a mouse. And if they can’t get it, they’ll go somewhere else. According to McKinsey & Company, 46% of respondents abandoned shopping carts online because shipping times were too long or not provided. Another 34% pointed to long delivery times as a big reason they shop in stores instead of online.  

With peak season around the corner, now is the time to prepare your warehouse for the non-stop orders and same-day delivery requests that would make even a North Pole elf shake in his pointy shoes. Effectively managing your warehouse during this period of high demand with even higher customer expectations takes careful planning that begins months before peak season kicks off.

Ready to start? We have some tips to get you there:

Fine-tune your inventory management processes.

In order to provide the same-day delivery customers expect even when peak season challenges capacity, your employees must be able to quickly locate the items they need when they need them. Incorrect or hard-to-reach inventory can create delays in the picking and packing process that in turn lead to missed deliveries. 

By clearing out expired or non-moving stock, repositioning inventory, placing your high-movers in the most convenient locations, and doing a full physical inventory count, you can maximize efficiencies and reduce the likelihood of disappointing customers if you need to cancel orders because of a bad inventory count. If a full physical inventory count isn’t possible, then plan for more regular partial cycle counts. The goal is to ensure you tally as much as possible ahead of peak season.

Before you start inventory, remind your staff to complete visual inspections to ensure anything that is damaged, missing labels or not up to quality standards is removed from inventory and brought to the attention of appropriate warehouse personnel.

Elasticize your capacity with last-mile delivery on tap.

The order surges that happen during peak season can stretch warehouse capacities to their limits. Traditional carriers tend to run daily sweeps to pick up and combine all less-than-truckload (LTL) shipments, which means orders can pile up as you’re left waiting for the next truck.

Keep inventory moving out the door by adding crowdsourced delivery as an always-on fulfillment option. Working with a crowdsourced delivery platform lets you keep orders moving after daily sweeps without the expense of maintaining your own fleet and the need to navigate labor shortages to find quality drivers.

Roadie’s crowdsourced delivery platform allows retailers to quickly respond to last-minute, last-mile demand by connecting them with a network of independent drivers that reaches 90% of U.S. households same-day — the largest local same-day delivery footprint in the nation. 

Whether your warehouse is sending out smaller items like toys and gadgets, or large electronics, Roadie enables you to deliver directly to your customer or your retail store, making sure customers have their orders and you have the inventory you need. 

Bundle deliveries with batching and routing.

Same-day deliveries don’t need to be a straight route from point A to point B. Consolidating orders happens throughout the supply chain, but it’s often overlooked for ultrafast orders. Using Roadie you can batch multiple orders, route same-day deliveries and have a crowdsourced driver deliver within hours to meet your customer demand for fast delivery.

At a time when your warehouse is filled to the rafters with inventory and your crew is working long hours, batching and routing orders with a single driver can make a radical difference in your operation’s efficiency. 

Scaling delivery volumes in this way also reduces the number of drivers coming in and out of your warehouse — a major plus during your busiest season.

Roadie’s software eases the order consolidation process by enabling warehouse managers to stage orders for different routes quickly. Once orders are submitted via a CSV file or API (application programming interface), Roadie’s algorithm finds the optimal combination of orders to batch and route and posts the batched deliveries for drivers to choose.

Get your warehouse ready for crowdsourced delivery.

With inventory organized and orders coming in, it’s time to prepare them for pickup. 

Save time and limit hassles by creating a dedicated staging area that’s easy for warehouse employees to access. Keep in mind that drivers may be picking up several orders, all going to the same location. Now is also the time to implement QR or bar codes to help warehouse workers and drivers easily identify the correct items with a quick scan.

If you’re grouping deliveries into routes, Roadie offers an app that can be downloaded onto mobile devices and scanners to help the warehouse crew group orders into batches, enabling your employees to efficiently stage and identify orders so driver handoff is a breeze.

Don’t forget to prepare warehouse staff for the differences in using  crowdsourced drivers compared to traditional carriers. Your crew is used to identifying delivery drivers who work for major carriers based on their uniform or vehicle, or they’ve been seeing them for daily or weekly pickups for months. But crowdsourced delivery drivers don’t work in the same way.

Crowdsourced delivery drivers won’t be wearing a uniform, and they’ll be driving their own vehicles. They may also be new to your facility and will require a little more on-site guidance when picking up their orders. Employees may also need to occasionally help drivers load orders into their vehicles.

Pointing these differences out to your staff so they know what to expect (and who to let in) will help you avoid time-consuming situations that delay shipments.

Other tips to get your facility ready for fast handoffs include:

• Assign a convenient pickup location. Make sure the area is accessible for easy loading into passenger vehicles that range in size from compact sedans to cargo vans. 

• Put up clear signage. Help drivers navigate to and from the pickup area by posting clear wayfinding signs inside and outside of your facility. 

Take a walk around the exterior and interior of your facility and place yourself in the shoes of a driver who has never been there. What’s obvious to you may not be to a newcomer, so the better marked your facility is, the more likely crowdsourced drivers will find their way in and out — quickly. 

• Help drivers find you through the Roadie app. Despite the signs, drivers may still have a hard time finding your facility. To help prevent this, use the Roadie app to communicate instructions directly to your drivers. 

Provide details about the drop-off location or specific instructions regarding the pickup. And, of course, always provide an on-site contact number just in case.

Make sure your team is ready to go — well before peak season.

Getting orders picked, packed and out the door for a timely arrival to customers will be your top priority come peak season.

Before a single driver arrives for pickup, your crew has to be game-ready. And just like in the major leagues, preseason is the time to train. 

The faster the handoff, the faster the delivery and the happier the customer. Now magnify this by every order you ship during peak season, and you’ll understand the importance of preparing your facility well ahead of time. 

Training and retraining employees in the latest processes, including working with (and preparing for) crowdsourced delivery drivers, is an important step. How comfortable your employees are with the systems you set up will determine how efficient your team is going to be during your busiest periods.

Preparing for peak season and providing same-day delivery on demand may take some work. But it’s also a great time to reset and level up, carrying you into the new year running smoother and stronger than ever before.

Is your warehouse ready to deliver on-demand? Download our white paper to discover how crowdsourced delivery helps you offer fast, efficient and affordable fulfillment when and where you need it.