5 Reasons Why an RFP is Crucial to Your System Selection

| Curt Barry

Without an RFP and demos it’s hard to go through the system selection process and know if what you’re looking at is materially better than the existing one. Here are five compelling reasons to go through an RFP process to vet systems and vendors and make sure you choose the right one for your business needs.

MCM Releases Top 3PLs 2017 Listing

| Brian Kelly

As ecommerce grows, so does the number of third-party logistics providers (3PLs). Check out MCM’s list of the top 3PLs for 2017 that can help you reduce costs and improve customer service.

How Frictionless Inventory Flow Delights Customers

| Steve Weber

Not only does accurate visibility influence customer experience, it also drives all downstream operational decisions including fulfillment, allocation and distribution. Just like you can’t manage cash flow without an accurate bank balance, you can’t manage fulfillment without inventory accuracy – making it flow like water. Here are some ways to make it happen.

5 Ways to Reducing Shipping Costs in the New Year

| Jake Rheude

Higher shipping costs not only harm your margins, but they may push away potential customers with a big appetite for online shopping. A bad experience or a high price could send them into the arms of your competitors. So what can you do to prevent this from happening? Here are 5 ways you can rein in high shipping costs.

Hudsons Bay Co. to Expand Robotic Fulfillment to U.S. in 2017

| Mike O'Brien

After a successful rollout of robotic fulfillment at its distribution center in Toronto recently, Hudson’s Bay Co. plans to expand the capability to a DC in Pottsville, PA sometime in 2017. See how the technology performed in Toronto, and how the company performed in terms of ecommerce growth during the third quarter.

Helping Workers Understand Your Business Benefits All Parties

| Curt Barry

Do your employees know what makes your company tick, and better yet what helps move the needle? Merchants need to do a better job of educating them on sales drivers and profitability, and the business benefits of investments and process improvements. The more they know, the more invested they’ll be in your success.

The Latest Trends in Ecommerce Packaging and Their Impacts

| Mike O'Brien

The packaging you use in ecommerce and direct-to-customer shipments acts as an ambassador of your brand. How it appears, how it protects the contents and even how the product is packed can reflect positively or negatively on your company. This special report from Multichannel Merchant examines how merchants are working to balance packaging costs and customer experience through innovation and use of new systems and processes.

How Do Your Merchant Operations Metrics Measure Up?

| Curt Barry

How do your merchant operations stack up across the distribution center, inventory management and the contact center? This exclusive benchmarking project and report from Multichannel Merchant and F. Curtis Barry & Co. will help you gauge your success across all 3 areas. If you’re a senior operations executive, be part of the benchmarking discussion and hear about the results at Operations Summit 2017, March 27-29 in Pittsburgh.

Global Parcel Shipping Projected to Grow 20% by 2018

| Mike O'Brien

A new index from Pitney Bowes projects that global parcel shipping will increase 5%-7% per year, increasing 20% by 2018, driven largely by ecommerce growth. See what else the company discovered while surveying parcel shippers in 12 markets.