Articles & Whitepapers

Sales without inventory—now there’s an oxymoron. Many of us who cut our teeth in the retail and catalog trade know that you have to own inventory to make sales. In fact, it’s the largest balance sheet asset in many businesses.

Every smart business manager is constantly looking for ways to reduce costs and make the operation more productive. In today’s challenging economic climate, such efforts become even more crucial. Small steps that can help to save money may make a big difference. Our experience in the fulfillment and call center has been that often the same process improvements used to reduce costs also result in better service—and greater customer satisfaction. These are some of our top tips in four of the key areas.

Inventory is most likely the largest balance sheet asset in your company. How well you plan, purchase, and manage your inventory largely determines your level of customer service and profits.

A formal compliance program can help reduce costs

Quality Circles, Total Quality Management, Dr. Deming’s 14 Point Theory and Six Sigma are all various programs aimed at improving quality in an organization. They have been successfully implemented in many corporations, but have failed to attract a following in the direct-to-customer fulfillment industry. Major reasons for this are the complexity and resources required to implement these highly touted quality control programs.

So you're shopping around for vendors, software and services to replace your current Web platform. Several questions no doubt go through your mind.

You have just spent four months doing your homework to replace your aging call center and order management system: gathering user requirements, writing an RFP, getting capable vendors to bid on it, conducting demos and selecting the finalist.  Yet there is one more activity that, if not done superbly, will shake management’s confidence that replacement of the old system will go smoothly.  If you haven’t adequately studied how management at every level—from CEO to department managers—will get the information they’re used to having in order to run the business on an online, daily, weekly, monthly and year-end basis, your credibility could be in trouble.

Introduction

For a long time, many prospective buyers of direct and retail systems have complained that there were not very many choices in terms of vendors and their offerings.  The good news is that over the last couple of years, some truly new and good competitors have emerged for the multichannel industry.  Some of this change stems from acquisitions; more is based on the competitive need to expand offerings to provide more functionality to customers.