Scanco's Inventory Management Blog

Stop Shipping Errors and Reduce the Cost of Mis-Shipments

  

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The cause of a mis-shipment can occur anywhere from your receiving dock to the customer’s door, and everywhere in between.  In order to stop shipping errors, the entire process from start to finish must be thoroughly examined. To this end, one Aberdeen study states:

To truly break through the 99% accuracy barrier, companies need to realize that accuracy starts with put away, returns processing and replenishment—the right item must be placed in the bin location to be begin with to ensure that it is selected correctly later in the process.*

The financial backlash resulting from miss shipments can be quite high because they affect so many aspects of your business. Consider the following:

• The extra processing required to fix mistakes.
  • The amount you have to pay employees to ship out the product each time, not to mention returning the wrong one back to the proper location within your warehouse.
  • The costs incurred by your customer service department in taking the call from the customer and setting up the return.
  • The amount of time your accounting department spends updating your financial system.
• The costs you may incur trying to keep the customer which may include discounting or completely reimbursing their item, and  shipping the correct item for free, often via an expedited method.
• Lower customer satisfaction levels, reducing customer retention rates.
• Acquiring new customers to replace the ones you lost – which according to industry estimates may reach up to $3,000 per new customer.

A perfect order is one that is: complete; delivered on time; damage free; and has the correct documentation pricing and invoicing information. Studies show that companies with perfect order rates (which is anything over 80%) are up to three times more profitable than those who maintain a 60% average. While achieving a perfect order status may seem difficult, it is a crucial goal to keep striving toward.

There have been several enhancements in the areas of scanning, digital imaging, and RFID devices that can help you implement a more streamlined process in regards to:

• Improving on-time delivery by reducing the time to receive, ship and validate items.
• Increasing warehouse efficiency of order completion by allowing your staff to scan products rather than input data by hand.
• Ensuring accurate invoicing and documentation through a reduction in the errors caused by manual data entry.
• And more!

If you would like to see how a Barcode Scanning Solution may help you improve the efficiency of your shipping process, click here to use our ROI Calculator.

*Aberdeen Study: What’s Really Working For Pallet, Case, and Piece-pick Operations?