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Why Your Company Should Care About Fulfillment Logistics

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Archives, Global Logistics, Global Trade Daily

Why Your Company Should Care About Fulfillment Logistics

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Fulfillment is one of the most essential parts of running a business. If you can’t fulfill your orders, everything will quickly fall apart. Because of that, you must ensure your company cares about fulfillment logistics.

Your customers will be happier and return to your business when you put extra effort into fulfillment. There are plenty of other reasons why you should care about fulfillment. So, keep reading to learn more!

What Are Fulfillment Logistics?

First, you’ll need to understand precisely what fulfillment logistics are. It’s the entire process of shipping, tracking, and delivering customer orders. You receive and store the goods, then send out what the customer orders. The process ends once the customer gets their order unless they send it back for a return. 

If anything goes wrong during fulfillment, the customer won’t be satisfied with your company and probably won’t order again.

In short, the fulfillment process is delivering an order to the customer. You’ll have a happy customer base if you have good fulfillment logistics.

Why Your Company Needs Good Fulfillment Logistics

Order fulfillment is one of the most critical aspects of your business. It can increase customer satisfaction, let your company run smoothly, and reduce inventory management and shipping costs.

Let’s break down all these reasons why your company should care about fulfillment logistics:

Increased Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty

The most important reasons you need good fulfillment logistics are increased customer satisfaction and loyalty. When customers receive their orders quickly and when they expect them, they’ll be much happier with your business.

When customers are more satisfied with an order, they’re much more likely to order from you again. They’ll also leave more positive reviews and talk about your company to their friends and family. So, if you want to increase positive word-of-mouth, then fulfillment is essential.

Not having good fulfillment processes can have the opposite impact on your business. When customers don’t receive their orders on time, or at all, they’re sure to be very disappointed, leading to them talking negatively about your business. You’ll also need to refund their orders, which can be complicated.

Plus, having loyal, returning customers is much better for your company. Repeat customers tend to have larger orders than new customers. They also may start ordering more frequently when satisfied with your fulfillment process.

Overall, customer satisfaction is essential to your company. So, your company needs to care about how long it takes them to get their orders to the customer.

Company Processes Run Smoothly

  

Next, having a quality fulfillment process can help the company run smoothly. You’ll have a much easier time tracking orders and managing inventory. You won’t have to worry as much about something going wrong during shipping, which can help your company save money.

Streamlining the process helps you deliver customer orders promptly, increasing their satisfaction. You’ll also spend less money over time and can put the time you save into parts of your business. Since returns are made more accessible, you also won’t have to spend as much to return the order to where it needs to be.

So, if you want your e-commerce business to run smoothly, you’ll want to work out a good fulfillment process for your customers.

Reduced Costs

Optimizing your fulfillment logistics can help your company save money, so it should be important. You won’t have to spend as much on inventory management and shipping with a reliable plan.

Effective inventory management also helps with cash flow and marketing, so your company can grow.

All of these reasons make fulfillment logistics essential to any company. No matter what kind of goods you’re selling, you’ll see growth if you make fulfillment the focus of your business.

Enhanced Inventory Management

  

With better inventory management, it won’t take warehouse workers as long to find goods for a customer’s order. This process allows the order to ship sooner and can help the company ship more orders in a set amount of time.

Real-time inventory management can benefit you the most with fulfillment since it’s very accurate. Plus, customers are happier when they receive their orders faster.

How To Improve Order Fulfillment Logistics

Now that you know how vital fulfillment is, you’ll want to improve how your company handles it. 

Here’s a quick breakdown of how you can do just that:

  1. Integrate all fulfillment systems to save time and reduce confusion.
  2. Carefully select all your warehouse locations. It should be close to your customers.
  3. Track inventory accurately.
  4. Keep goods organized and practice slotting optimization.
  5. Study fulfillment analytics to make improvements.
  6. Understand supply and demand. Plan for demand increases.
  7. Streamline fulfillment management as much as possible. Doing so can reduce the chance of errors.

Focusing more on order fulfillment is sure to benefit your company. You should talk with professionals if you are unsure where to start. Keep in mind that completely optimizing your company’s fulfillment process can take a bit of trial and error, so it won’t happen right away.

Should You Outsource Fulfillment?

Outsourcing your fulfillment process is a good option for most companies. These third-party groups are experts in fulfillment and have tools and resources that your business might need access to. 

Fulfillment centers can over more inventory space and management, allowing goods to ship faster. Your company can also save on packaging, tracking, and shipping costs since all of these aspects are generally bundled into the service.

They also offer excellent delivery times for customers because they can optimize all the fulfillment process steps. Plus, many offer excellent analytics tracking to further enhance fulfillment the longer you outsource to them.

Overall, outsourcing to fulfillment can be a great idea for many businesses.

Fulfillment Logistics Are Always Important

As you can see, fulfillment logistics are very important, and your company needs to care about this process. A good fulfillment process can increase customer satisfaction, improve inventory management, and make your business run smoother.

It can have the opposite effect if you don’t have a strong fulfillment process!

data
Archives, Global Trade Daily, Special Reports

5 Tips for Keeping Your Business Data Secure

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As a business, you can keep track of data for many customers and from some of the work you have done yourself. Whether it is research or surveys or from other locations, this data is integral to helping you get ahead of the competition. 

It can also be personal information from your customers and keeping this secure and safe from hackers who may like to get ahold of the data is so important. But how are you going to keep the data somewhere you can use it while ensuring that it will stay safe?

The good news is that businesses do have options when it comes to keeping their business data as secure as possible. Some of the steps that you can take to keep your business data secure include:

Come Up With Your Strategy

It is never good to have a vague idea of your procedures and policy. You need to have a formally written IT strategy that has all of the details about your plan. This plan needs to lay out how you plan to protect your resources and data along with steps that everyone must take if something goes wrong. 

Writing the plan is just the first step. You will need to keep it updated and nearby at all times. When something changes along with your business, you need to bring out that plan and make some of the necessary problems as well. 

You may need to sit down with a cybersecurity specialist to help you figure out what steps should be in the plan. This will ensure that nothing is left out of the plan and can help you discover some more of the vulnerabilities that may be present in your network. 

Protect Your Network Against Malware

With a plan in place, you are able to take the necessary steps to keep all of the bad stuff out. Come up with a plan that will ward off malware and any other malicious software that could take your data. 

Always assume that a hacker is trying to get to your data and be proactive. Some of the ways that you can do this include:

-Apply a firewall: While this is not enough to do on its own, your router’s firewall is going to provide a good line of defense so keep it turned on. 

-PC protection: This can include anti-malware and anti-virus protection on your system. You may also need some protection to help protect you against identity theft, suspect websites, and more. 

-Clean out the emails: This is often the job of anti-spam software. This can keep the unwanted, unsecured emails out and protects from accidentally hitting one that can cause issues. 

Encrypt the Wireless Network

If you are using a wireless network at all, then you need to have some special precautions in place. Encryption is a good place to start, but if it is not done well, hackers are still able to get around it all and can cause trouble. You need to make sure that your router has the right amount of strength to keep others out. 

One way is to use encryption here. Another is to turn off the broadcasting function on the router. This will help make your network invisible. When a hacker is not able to see your wireless network, it is a lot harder for them to hack right through it. 

Watch the Passwords

Even your password can be strengthened to help safeguard all of the data in your system. This can be a hassle to remember, but the more complexity that you get with the password, the easier it is to protect your data and everything on the system. 

There are a few steps that you can take to help safeguard your password. Make sure that it is a minimum of eight characters long and add non-standard characters and numbers as well. This makes it harder for anyone to figure out what the passwords are. 

You should also consider changing up the passwords on occasion to make it harder to guess. Using different credentials that are not words and passwords that are random letters and numbers and special characters can be a good option as well.

You may find in this situation that a password manager is going to come in handy. This makes it easier to keep track of these random passwords so you do not need to write them down and risk them being stolen. 

For your business, make sure that everyone is on the same page when it comes to passwords. Enforce that these passwords need to be strong to help protect the data by setting up rules that everyone must follow. 

Set Up Software Updates

This should be something that is automatic. When you do not complete some of the necessary updates with your software, it makes it much easier for hackers to find some of the vulnerabilities in the system and do what they want inside. 

Hackers are more than happy to scan a network or a website to see which version of the software is running at that time. They can then take a look at which vulnerabilities are present for them to explore in some of the older versions. 

You should take the time to update your device security settings, any operating system you need, and other software to the newest versions and do any other updates as necessary as you use the system. 

You can also set it up so any patches and improvements that come out are going to update for you automatically in the background. This takes out the guesswork on when it needs to be done while protecting your whole network from any potential threats. 

Keeping Your Data Safe

As a business, it is your responsibility to keep all of the data that you use as safe as possible. There are different ways to do this but with the help of some of the steps above, you can keep hackers off and keep all of that data as safe as possible. 

IT hires
Archives, Global Trade Daily, Software

The Soft Skills You Should Look For When Recruiting IT Hires

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When you hear soft skills, you may wonder what it means. Like software, soft skills are innate, internal, and interpersonal skills that help people maximize their hard skills. Soft skills are so named because; you mostly don’t have a certificate to show for it. They reflect who you are independent of your educational and professional IT certifications. 

Soft skills include your communication skills, how you perform under pressure, your collaborative skills, etc. As an employer, it’s okay to want the most qualified person for the job, but much more than the certificate, you should look out for these soft skills too when recruiting your IT hires.

1. Integrity

As an employer, probably recruiting the first set of your IT hires or filling a vacant position, one uncompromising soft skill you will want to look out for is integrity. Yes! Integrity can’t be compromised, as your IT hires have to people you can trust wholeheartedly. 

The top signs of persons with integrity include the ability to give an honest report. They would also be forthcoming and straightforward. While this skill is not easily observed except when tested or the situation demands it, there are a set of interview questions you can ask to determine the strength of a person’s integrity. 

You can ask questions that border on past experiences like:

-What was your response to a situation that tested your integrity in the past?

-Can you tell lies to protect the company’s image?

Now, it’s not so much about the answers the applicant gives, but about how they answer the questions. Someone with integrity will not lie for any reason; instead, they will find ways to tell the truth in a way that won’t harm the company.

2. Intelligence

This is another very essential soft skill for an IT hire. Intelligence isn’t just about your school grades or awards. Intelligence is how well you can apply all the lessons you’ve learned since growing up to do a seemingly difficult task. To put it simply, intelligence is the activities you do that gets you out of a difficult situation, especially when you don’t know what to do.

As an IT employer, you shouldn’t just employ an honest person. They should be someone that is proactive and can think on their feet. You can assess this type of skill when interviewing by asking ‘on the spot questions’ unrelated to the technical field. Questions that require fast and on the spot thinking. 

The goal is to check the thinking pattern and how fast they can think. Another quick method to determine this is to play a game. Games such as ‘Chess game’ or caught in the maze require your intelligence to play effectively. 

3. Time Management Skills

There will be times when your IT Company will have to meet tight deadlines. The best approach to get the work done is to prioritize tasks in order of deadline. It is important your employees are people that understand the significance of keeping to time and managing time effectively. 

The time management skill will ensure they know how to prioritize tasks when necessary. You can assess this skill by asking hypothetical behavioral questions. You can also give some sets of mini-tasks within a stipulated time and see how well and how fast they get the job done. 

4. Communication Skills

The ability to communicate with people on a personal level will go far in growing your IT Company. It’s easy for IT recruiters to get caught up in the technology and forget to pay attention to the candidate’s communication skills. There is a fine balance between being tech-savvy and having a friendly personality – so you need to be clear on which quality the candidate possesses. 

As a recruiter, you need to know that your employee also has a soft side and is willing to connect with people personally. If the candidate doesn’t seem capable of doing that, it may be a good idea to find someone who does!

Besides, if the candidate can connect well with those in charge, they’ll likely do a better job – and the results will reflect that. It’s one of the many reasons that soft skills are essential in today’s IT industry.

5. Creativity 

Being creative is non-negotiable. The ability to be creative goes hand in hand with being intelligent. The only twist is that being creative gives you the edge of seeing more than one way to get a task done. With the ability to see more than one approach, you are usually at the forefront of most tasks. A creative person has a highly active and imaginative mind that makes innovation a part of them. 

Being innovative is a soft skill, but like intelligence, it also comes with being creative. This means that being creative allows you to have more than one or two soft skills. As a recruiter, one skill you have to set your eagle eyes on when searching for soft skills in your IT hires is the ability to be creative. 

You can test the skill by asking hypothetical behavioral questions or giving a task that demands creativity. 

6. Self-Motivation

Dragging employees around or giving instructions for every little detail can be tiring. You need employees that are self-motivated and can work independently with little or no supervision. The thing is, you may not be able to assess a person’s self-motivation easily. 

However, you can determine how self-motivated he is by checking the number of extra-curricular activities he has done before. These should be well highlighted in the resume. You can also ask questions like:

-How did he get to know about the job vacancy?

-Have you been in any leadership position before?

-Give instances where you worked with little or no supervision?

7. Enthusiasm 

One of the things you should look for when it comes to a potential candidate is their interest in learning more about the industry in which they’re interested in working. If the candidate seems excited about the opportunity they’re applying for, they’ll probably be happy to help you. 

If the applicant asks questions that show an interest in understanding the company more, they’ll likely do even better. This indicates that the candidate is interested in the company and can easily take the initiative. 

If you get a chance to meet such an applicant behind the desk, take advantage of this opportunity – you’ll get a great feeling from their personality that could easily transfer to the position you’re looking to fill. 

8. Teamwork

Some IT tasks require the ability to work effectively with a team. As a recruiter, you need to watch out for people that can work and cooperate well with others on the same task. Some skills required to achieve teamwork include excellent communication skills and the ability to follow instructions.

This is because cooperation can only be achieved when communication is effective. For instance, if the job role is coding, you may not need to worry about teamwork that much, but if the applicant roles involve networking or administration, they will definitely need to work with a team. You can check the resumes to see instances of teamwork done in the past.

The Right Hires Will Have The Necessary Soft Skills

Recruiting IT hires demands that you sharpen your eagle eyes and sense to recognize soft skills to promote your IT Company. Most companies now have IT departments that need people with hard skills like computer programming, software engineering, website designing, etc. And truthfully, there a lot of people with these qualifications. 

However, you also need people with soft skills that are self-motivated, good communicators, and enthusiastic about the company’s growth. The right hires are people that have balanced soft and hard skills. With these people in your team, your company can grow to its potential. And you do want that, don’t you?