BY BEN AMES, SENIOR EDITOR
OMNICHANNEL STRATEGY
Strategy
THE PEAK HOLIDAY SHOPPING SEASON IS A MAKE-or-break period for retailers, as consumers rush to stores
and websites with gift lists in hand. Many companies make
the bulk of their annual revenue in that hectic three- to
four-week period from the day after Thanksgiving to Dec.
23, so the stakes are high for retailers, their carriers, and
their logistics service providers (LSPs).
Botched execution can dent a company’s profit margin
as well as its reputation. Atlanta-based transport and
logistics giant UPS Inc. saw that happen in 2013 when
the carrier drew sharp criticism for significant delivery
delays after underestimating the last-minute surge in
e-commerce orders that hit its network in the final
days of the peak season. The company spent heavily to
avoid that scenario in following years but watched its
profit margins shrink in the 2016 peak as it struggled
to handle a record 712 million packages.
So how do companies handle traffic surges without
blowing their budgets for the rest of the year? DC VELOCITY
asked some logistics service providers to share lessons
learned from their experiences in 2016 and tell us what they
would do differently in 2017.
GET CREATIVE WITH LABOR
A growing challenge for any logistics provider is hiring
and training the temporary employees it needs to ramp up
operations during peak season. “It has become more and
more challenging to get access to qualified material han-
dling labor, and the wages required to keep these workers
have increased,” said Todd Everett, president and CEO
merce services for retailers. “You’re more than doubling the
workforce for a very short period of time.”
The growing worker shortage has led Newgistics to
seek out new sources of labor, offer hiring incentives, and
launch engineering studies to find ways to reduce the labor
required to handle the swelling volume of e-commerce
orders. The company is also looking for ways to use its
warehouse and labor management software to simplify
material handling tasks in the DC, streamline training for
warehouse jobs, and quickly move workers to new tasks in
response to changes in demand.
“You have to make sure you’re not training everyone to
Sharing lessons learned from
past peaks can help shippers and
their service providers survive the
make-or-break holiday rush.
Top tips on how to
handle the 2017 peak
shipping season
