Curt Barry
Curt Barry is chairman of F. Curtis Barry & Company, a consulting firm specializing in multichannel operations and fulfillment. The firm provides services in system selection and implementation in OMS, WMS, ERP and Inventory systems, 3PL logistics, distribution center design, improvement in facility capacity, workflow and cost reduction and benchmarking. Curt is the author of “Best Practices in Multichannel Operations and Fulfillment.”
Relocating your fulfillment operations is disruptive and can be challenging for employees even in the most organized businesses. Developing plans that all stakeholders collaborate on and buy into will help you minimize lost employee time and remain focused.
Entrusting your customer service or fulfillment to a third-party logistics (3PL) company is a big step. Like using other outside services, it’s important to manage the process to reduce errors and exceptions, providing a high level of service at an affordable cost. These 8 steps will help you get the most from your 3PL partner.
Risk analysis is essential for large and complex DTC fulfillment projects including the above as well as moving to or from third-party fulfillment operations. As a result, most large projects are not delivered on time or within budget. Understanding risk and the likelihood of negative outcomes will help reduce costs and improve on-time implementation.
In this ecommerce world of point, click and deliver, are you accurately monitoring DTC operations metrics to help you meet high expectations from both customers and management? Check out these fulfillment and customer service KPIs from six different direct-to-customer merchants and see how your operations stack up.
What differentiates a highly effective IT department from an average one in a multichannel company? To help ensure yours falls under the former case, here are 4 key considerations based on our experience.
Among the strategies that will make you more competitive, increase sales and improve customer service, better inventory management, including planning and forecasting, should be at the top of the list. To help you get a better handle on inventory management, tracking these key performance indicators (KPIs) will help you assess your performance.
As we all know, customers can now easily comparison shop online, becoming more price savvy and opportunistic. As you think about your business, what sets your business apart from the competition in terms of customer experience? Here are two great real-life examples of a “wow” experience.
While barcodes have been in use for many years in shipping and manifesting systems, many warehouses still don’t fully use this technology. That’s a shame, because barcodes help you reduce costs and increase control of your operation.
If you’ve been around long enough, you know there’s a shortage of experienced managers in retail, catalog and now ecommerce operations for decades. To help counter that trend, here are some thoughts on how to develop better operations managers for your direct-to-customer or ecommerce business.
As Amazon’s multi-fulfillment-center strategy continues to put pressure on multichannel merchants, having an effective inventory management strategy to maximize sales, profits and customer service becomes that much more crucial. Here are 10 points to consider as you develop and refine your inventory strategy.