How to Budget for a New Warehouse Management System

| Brian Barry

One of the biggest challenges companies face in acquiring a new WMS is how to budget accurately. To make matters worse, when companies ask vendors for the cost, they may get an incomplete picture. To develop an accurate budget for replacing your current warehouse system, focus on these 9 cost categories.

warehouse interior blur feature

MCM Outlook 2019: Getting Creative in Operations to Meet Demands

| Mike O'Brien

Amazon may have raised the customer expectations bar, but the pressure has been kept up as merchants scramble to meet increased fulfillment demands. So how do you react and execute? Our MCM Outlook 2019 report gathers survey results and expert insights to help you focus your investments to compete and win.

Kroger Selects Orlando Area for Second Automated Fulfillment Center

| Mike O'Brien

Kroger plans to build the second of 20 automated distribution centers in partnership with UK grocer Ocado for fulfilling ecommerce orders in Groveland, FL. The state-of-the-art FCs, built by Kroger and powered by Ocado’s automation technology, are just part of Kroger’s innovation push including driverless and same-day delivery.

Customer Experience Metrics Are Key Measures of Supply Chain Success

| Mike O'Brien

Nearly all supply chain managers responding to a recent survey by Convey and eft Supply Chain and Logistics Business Intelligence said they consider customer experience to be important when measuring last-mile performance, while two-thirds of them say they’re held accountable for standard customer experience KPIs.

Retooling Your Fulfillment Network to Stay Competitive

| MCM Staff

To succeed, retailers and ecommerce companies need to meet heightened customer experience demands. That means offering fast shipping, free returns and same-day delivery, if possible. Learn insights from industry experts on ways to optimize your fulfillment network and focus your technology investments to compete and win.

Enterprise Resource Planning, ERP, order management, order management system, operations and fulfillment, retail operations

How to Assess Your True Readiness for a System Go Live Date

| Curt Barry

It’s one thing to be running behind on programming modifications, testing and implementing your systems project. It’s another to unknowingly commit your company to a system go live without management review, risk assessment and agreement and signoff. These 10 points should be part of your readiness assessment.

unified commerce dial

How Omnichannel Can Beat Back Amazon and Attract Loyal Customers

| Charles Dimov

Though Amazon’s dominance of ecommerce may bring about feelings of doom or gloom, many retailers do not realize the influence they have to capture buyers before they default to Amazon. The key to achieving success is through providing omnichannel options that the ecommerce behemoth can’t match.

UPS city delivery

Parcel Delivery Jobs Slashed in February, But Overall Trend is Up

| Mike O'Brien

Parcel delivery companies saw some post-peak falloff, eliminating 9,700 positions in February even as jobs grew in other sectors while hiring overall cooled, according to the Department of Labor, the Wall Street Journal reported. Overall 53,000 parcel delivery jobs were added in the past 12 months, and warehouse hiring also remains strong.

rue21 Rolling Out BOPIS in All 700+ U.S. Stores

| Mike O'Brien

Joining a growing group of retailers eager to match the heightened expectations of today’s shoppers and save on delivery costs, youth apparel seller rue21 has partnered with Mastek to offer buy online pickup in store (BOPIS) at its 700+ store locations. The rollout began in January and is expected to be completed by the end of March.