We were recently asked if we could help one of our customers reduce the cost and time it takes to ship products to their customers and also maximize the potential for them to avoid buying from warehouses where certain products were out of stock, and instead ship from the next nearest warehouse where products were available. We were able to do this by utilizing the tools available in the xocbox Order Manager.
As many retailers found out last year, the pandemic has caused supplier inventory levels to fluctuate sharply. A product that has plenty of stock one day can quite easily be completely sold out by the next day.
If the supplier has more than one warehouse holding stock of the same products, shipping from another location can often be the answer. However, this can be a time-consuming and expensive solution for the retailer who first has to locate the warehouse(s) with the quantity required to fulfill the order, then figure out the best carrier to use for shipping, and decide whether all other items in the order could be shipped from the same location, or whether the order will need to be split and shipped from multiple warehouses.
xocbox streamlines the process of managing order fulfillment by quickly giving you visibility to stock availability at a given location, and helping you choose the most optimal shipping method.
The xocbox Order Module is able to check orders received online against available supplier inventory, and the dropdown menu shows quantities of each SKU at each warehouse.
If the order can be fulfilled by the nearest warehouse to the delivery address, and the cutoff time has not passed, then this option is chosen. If the order cannot be fulfilled by the closest warehouse, then the decision can be made to split the shipment between warehouses, or fulfill the whole order from a warehouse that is further away if that is a possibility.
If order fulfillment and inventory management have been problematic for your business, contact xocbox to learn more about our Order Module and Shipping Manager and how we might be able to help.