Multichannel Merchant and F. Curtis Barry & Company, with support from the Retail Value Chain Federation (RVCF), have partnered on a joint project to benchmark 60+ major operational costs, productivity and customer service metrics on a blind basis with dozens of ecommerce and multichannel companies.
Having the opportunity to benchmark against other companies will help you determine where you need to focus your effort and investments to reach and exceed customer expectations. To illustrate, here are 6 ways the benchmarking survey can improve your company’s performance:
Learn what KPIs to monitor and why: Understanding where to collect the raw data and then calculate the KPIs gives you new insight.
Compare operations costs, metrics with other multichannel companies: Not all benchmarks are the same for each company. Get behind the numbers and gain insight.
Become more efficient in your DTC operations: Gain a better understanding of your costs and become more efficient in your processes, as ecommerce and omnichannel continue to revolutionize retail.
Adapt your operations: What measurements and reporting results will best fit your needs? External benchmarking is beneficial but you also need to develop measures that are meaningful to your business and do year-over-year comparisons, maybe set against new goals.
Feedback and coaching: How do companies communicate results to employees and coach them toward increased productivity?
Managing improved results: Learn how DTC executives are getting information through reporting and dashboards.
Here are some of the deliverables you’ll get from the study:
- Fulfillment cost per order analyzed by labor, occupancy, packing materials and shipping costs, etc.
- Fulfillment and contact center costs as a percent of net sales
- Cost per order shipped, cost per box shipped, cost per line and unit shipped
- Contact center cost per order and call analyzed by labor, occupancy, telecom, systems, etc.
- Inventory metrics including order and item fill rates, inventory turnover, gross margin, cost of back order
- Service-level metrics in contact center and fulfillment
The results of the survey – which you can take here – will be presented at the Executive Operations Forum on March 28 at Operations Summit 2017 in Pittsburgh, produced by MCM. In addition to the survey results, there will be presentations on best practices by ecommerce operations leaders.
You can still be part of the benchmarking study even if you can’t attend the conference, and I can schedule a phone briefing with your team to review the results.
Participating companies will receive a detailed report by company of my analytics and a comparison of the 60+ key performance indicators (KPIs) and costs. Curt Barry will spend an hour with your team discussing the study details and best practices at no charge. All data provided is treated with the strictest confidentiality and is not identified by company name.
Feel free to pass the survey to a senior operations executive in your organization who can approve and provide data covering fulfillment, contact center and inventory. The cutoff for data collection is Feb. 17. If you would like to review the survey questions prior to taking the survey, we can provide a PDF worksheet.
If you have any questions about the study you can contact me at 804-814-8168 or [email protected].
Take this opportunity to arm yourself with new ways to improve your operational results.
Curt Barry is founder & president of F. Curtis Barry & Company