4 Secrets to Staying Ahead of Peak Season Shipping

Peak season shipping is just around the corner. From E-Commerce businesses to logistics services, everyone is so caught up during this time of the year. It isn’t as easy as you think to partner with shipping companies and carrier facilitators in the nick of time. 

But you know what? You can still rock the show like a pro.  

Here, we’ve shared some of the supreme secrets of staying ahead during the peak season shipping, which will cover tips to overcome hurdles, partnering with warehouse management services, exploring the supply chain market, and more.  

Without further ado, let’s get started.

What is Peak Season Shipping?

Peak Season Shipping is one of the meddlesome and busiest seasons of the year for the E-commerce industry as the demand for imports and supplies grows exponentially. 

Why is it so? 

We all love exchanging gifts with our loved ones during festive occasions, right? Regardless of the location, when we wish to do it, we will do it. 

This exactly causes demand in the supplies, overcharges and high freight rates which ultimately leads to the peak season shipping, a tough time for the supply chain and logistics industries.

When is Peak Season Shipping in 2021?

October to December is considered as the given a plethora of festivals and holidays in place. Some of the notable occasions are Dussehra, Diwali, Black Friday, Thanksgiving, Cyber Monday, Christmas and New year. 

The 4 Supreme Secrets to staying ahead of Peak Season Shipping 

This far, you might have understood what & when is the Peak Season Shipping. Now, let’s dive deeper into the 4 supreme secrets of staying ahead of the Peak Season Shipping. In this section, we’ve also talked about the mistakes that are bound to happen and have suggested some solutions to overcome any challenge that comes your way. 

There you go: 

• Plan things early
• Do an extensive analysis and compare the data with previous
• Talk to your vendors, service providers, carrier facilitators, shippers, logistics well in advance
• Make use of technology, the smarter way

Plan early

Mistake: You think you have enough time. But there isn’t 🙂 

There are only two things you need to succeed – A plan and not quite enough time. When your inner self feels that you have lots of time left, that’s when you go wrong, and the system breaks. 

It’s never too early to develop a friendly rapport with your vendors, carrier facilitators, shippers, and logistics services. Note that new carriers won’t take on any new customers during the eleventh hour. Some might not cope up with your speed, while some charge you 2x the actual cost at the last moment. 

Do you really need this? No, we wouldn’t advise you to go through this. 

Solution:

If your end goal is to make your customers happy and satisfied with your delivery service and create a delightful experience throughout, be sure of planning things early.

2.Do an extensive analysis and compare the data with previous year 

Mistake: You don’t compare & correlate the data with that of the previous year’s. 

At times, you might forget about how you managed and survived the previous year’s peak season. Despite having all the required data in hand, you still start everything from scratch. 

We all learn from our mistakes. don’t we? 

When something hasn’t worked the previous year, it makes no sense to try it again. When last year’s vendor had failed to commit to their promises, try better vendors who offer the best shipping services, though the spend is a little higher than last year’s. 

Your customers are ready to pay a little more when you offer a superb service and create a pleasant shipping experience. 

When they are ready, why aren’t you? 

Solution: 

Do a thorough analysis of what has worked and what’s not. Keep an eye on the number of orders and locations to which the orders have to be dispatched. Be extremely calculative with your expenses. 

Tip: Try shipping companies like FedEx, Aramex, DHL, Delhivery, Blue Dart, and Ecom Express as they offer exceptional services in the logistics and supply chain management space. 

    3. Be prepared for anything that discomforts you

Mistake: You might be optimistic about things going as planned, but at times, it won’t. 

Covid19 pandemic has hit the logistics and supply chain industries so hard, because of which there’s an alarming increase in the freight rates, resulting in a crowded capacity market. The warehouse management services have definitely been facing a tough time like never before to stock things up. There’s even a bigger problem. The shippers and the carriers will cut their services off at times, which completely breaks the entire process.

Things like these are bound to happen and being prepared is the only option left for you.

Solution

The problem is that we think we have done things the right way and there won’t be any challenges or hurdles. This is where we get wrong. It will only seem to be working out nicely but not every single time. 

You should be always be prepared for:

• Longer transit time & delays
• Multiple backup options
• Tight capacities
• Higher freight rates

Tip: Work with a trusted third-party logistics company to make things extremely easy and seamless for you. 

    4. Make use of technology, the smarter way!

Mistake: We tend to do things, the traditional way, while we can just automate the entire process. 

Technology is booming every day. There are some kickass SaaS products wrapped with amazing solutions for all your problems. Complex processes are simplified in no time with automation. 

Why don’t we make good use of it? 

Yes. We heard you. You can never automate it all. 

But at least some portion of your manual work? 

Automating processes has a significant long term benefit. You’ll never succeed in manually pulling every usable data of the previous year’s peak season. But with the use of the right SaaS software, this is definitely a doable one. 

Does their investment seem to be huge? Worry not!

Software’s such as www.eshipz.com help clients reduce manual efforts by 80% by processing orders faster, at a considerably lower cost.

Read more about their client success stories here.

It’s complex to create processes, and bring things in place. But if you get that right, your journey can be ensured with success at every stage of the peak season shipping. 

Solutions

Don’t get too many things on your plate. Depend on reliable shipping software for your business. You can evaluate eshipz, a shipping software that is built for your needs. We have inbuilt product features that include Non-Delivery Report (NDR), Prescriptive Analysis, real-time tracker for return management, supply chain visibility and more.

Wrapping it up!!!! 

On a friendly note, you’ll have to accept the fact that every industry, from E-Commerce to logistics, is super caught up during the Peak Season Shipping. It won’t take much to go easy on them. Having said that, planning things upfront would solve 90% of your problems, just because you’ll have enough time to plan and experiment with different techniques or rely on other plans if the initial one isn’t working out your way. 

Evaluate a reliable software that automates your manual efforts. Develop an amazing network, from carriers to shippers. Be open to exploring a plethora of options – don’t stick to one. Be prepared to pay a little extra if the work seems to be getting done.