In e-commerce industry, next day delivery service is a popular trend. As many people now prefer a fast paced system of delivery, almost all e-tailers offer fast delivery service to grasp a huge number of potential consumers.
In a lot of cases, fulfilling orders the next day is an asset that takes company way higher in the market. Where consumers demand for a high level of service from ordinary delivery to something as fast as next day delivery, companies who are desiring to make the shift also need to understand the “cost to serve”.
So what does it take to have a next day delivery service? In this article, you will learn just what you might need to put in place to have an unprecedented next day delivery service.
Next Day Delivery Service Budgeting
To successfully have a next delivery service, you need a fundamental shift from batch processing to an event-driven processing of items. This means that you are not just going to invest money. You are also going to spend time and effort.
Let’s say you already have an ordinary delivery service and now you want to include a same day delivery service, then you have two options. First, you can keep your ordinary delivery system and offer a next day delivery. Or you can just specialize in a next day delivery service.
If you choose the first option, the cost can be higher because you will have to maintain two service. But if you choose to maintain only one kind of service, you can save on your budget. Again, this can all depend on what your consumers might need and what you would want offer to them.
Getting Started with the Next Day Delivery System
You can’t start with a same day delivery courier without a robust planning. First of all, you need to set your goals – lay down and itemize each of the things that you would want to achieve in your company. Once you are done listing down your goals, then you can start planning on how you can start on each of the item.
A next day delivery system can be a challenged to every retailer, especially for those who are first timers in the market. However, since you are getting started on a next day delivery system, here are few things that you need to examine.
How are your orders coming in? Figure out a system as to how you are going to receive your orders. Or if you have an ordinary delivery system, figure out how you can merge both systems together. Prepare the materials and equipment needed, including contracts, warehouse, delivery vans, and receipts.
How do you validate your inventory? When your orders reach 100 or more, you will need a reliable inventory of items to keep up where they are. If you can’t build one, you will have problems monitoring your deliveries later on, especially that you are now having a fast-paced system.
What is your target speed of processing? Since you are trying to achieve a one-day fulfillment, it is important that you have a fast processing of almost everything. Set up a timeline and schedule out the different transactions you need to achieve in a specific period. Set your receiving time and cut off time, so your customers will better know when to send their orders to be considered for the next day delivery.
How can you flag an order as something for the next day delivery? Create a system that will tell allow your workers to know which one is for fast delivery and which one is for ordinary. This is important because, you will have more items than you can expect later on. The next you will know, you will be faced be tons of volumes of items for a next day delivery.