10 Festive Season Best Practices To Stop You From Over-Ordering, Stocking Out, And Losing Orders
Published on September 20, 2023
• 6 min read
To fulfil this potential record-breaking level of client demand, it is essential to have the right inventory festive season best practices on hand. The pandemic made us all into supply chain management experts in our living rooms, and it is simple to understand how the numerous issues generating delays and shortages may affect the winter vacations.
A substantial portion of the retail industry is impacted: According to the NRF research of CEOs, 70% have seen delays that have lengthened supply chain deadlines by two to three weeks, and 85% are struggling with inventory shortages.
- 1. Optimizing Inventory Forecasting:
- 2. Analyzing Past Holiday Sales:
- 3. DTC Trends: Festive Season Best Practices
- 4. Managing Holiday Inventory With Audits:
- 5. Optimizing Data Accuracy:
- 6. Inventory Visibility For the Holiday Season:
- 7. Proactive Supplier Communication:
- 8. Navigating Supply Chain Challenges For Profitable Customer Service:
- 9. Smart Inventory Management For Peak Shopping Seasons:
- 10. Customer Service For Business Success:
- Conclusion:
1. Optimizing Inventory Forecasting:
Businesses must utilise dynamic demand planning formulas in situations like these to precisely forecast inventory requirements and calculate the appropriate quantities of replenishment.
Using historical demand data and sales projections, demand planning calculates replenishment by taking into account schedules, availability, delivery speed, and lead times.
2. Analyzing Past Holiday Sales:
To understand the future, you must first understand the past. Start by bringing up all of your historical holiday sales reports from the last few years.
Use the data to ascertain your top-selling items, the number of units sold, and the start of the holiday shopping festive season best practices. This will make it simpler for you to determine what you need and how many units to order.
3. DTC Trends: Festive Season Best Practices
After building your foundation with historical data, the time has come to include the most recent DTC trends. You may adjust forecasts this way to more accurately represent actual demand.
Excel is frequently used by merchants to forecast demand, which explains why so many of them err. Unfortunately, this manual process is tedious, time-consuming, and prone to human error.
4. Managing Holiday Inventory With Audits:
You’ll require frequent inventory audits to make sure your inventory is accurate if you don’t have real-time inventory management. This is especially useful before the holidays so you can manage your festive season best practices demand better and avoid selling items you don’t truly have in stock.
These inventory mismatches frequently result from stolen commodities, improperly completed purchase orders, and broken goods that are not properly written off.
5. Optimizing Data Accuracy:
The formulae and engines that generate forecasts must be fed with correct and current data. Because of this, ensuring that incoming procedures are excellent is crucial to ensuring that inventory management operates at its peak.
Unbelievably frequently, the whole incoming process or significant portions of it, are managed on spreadsheets. Everything further along the line will be impacted, for instance, if receiving systems are ineffective or unable to ensure close to 100% correctness.
When a picker subsequently seeks to fill a client order for three brushes, they will only discover two in the trash since a receiving colleague marked three purple toothbrushes on a spreadsheet when only two were really delivered. From there, the systems and the client encounter degrade much further.
6. Inventory Visibility For the Holiday Season:
Companies with warehouse facilities want to think about putting money into inventory visibility. This enables users to view their inventory’s quantity as well as its location inside the warehouse or transportation path.
Inventory visibility throughout the holiday festive season best practices makes sure that all channels accurately display the goods that are available for purchase. Additionally, it aids in improving the accuracy of demand planning so that supply levels can accurately represent current demand.
7. Proactive Supplier Communication:
The Christmas festive season best practices can often see a rise in client demand, which can make it more challenging to communicate with suppliers. This is why it would be wise to get in touch with them as soon as possible.
You should enquire about potential lead times while speaking with your suppliers. The lead time will help you decide how much stock you should order in advance more wisely. It also offers information about deadlines.
8. Navigating Supply Chain Challenges For Profitable Customer Service:
Labour, part, and supply shortages, shipping delays, and price increases plague supply chains. Customers demand more quickly and for a lower price. Whether there is a Christmas rush or not, that creates a challenging environment. In fact, the NRF poll revealed that free shipping and free returns are the most popular online services among consumers.
How can your company provide services profitably? Efficiency in inbound procedures will result in efficiency in outward ones, and the firm will have access to data to make decisions that are both economical and beneficial to customers.
For instance, providing the experiences that customers want is easily within your grasp if you reliably and consistently know how many units of any particular item you have and where.
9. Smart Inventory Management For Peak Shopping Seasons:
Your firm will be far better equipped to handle the additional demand during peak shopping festive season best practices if inventory is carefully planned.
There are simple strategies to ensure sure your inventory never drops below that level once you have an idea of what you will need throughout the Christmas festive season best practices.
Tracking stock levels and automatically establishing reorder notification points is a useful tool whether you operate with a tech-enabled 3PL or use inventory management software.
It is advised that you raise your reorder points and your reorder quantity throughout the holiday festive season best practices to account for an increase in sales.
10. Customer Service For Business Success:
Customer service is the backbone of every business, and it is especially important over the holidays.
A single dissatisfied client may send a damaging message that has a significant influence on your reputation.
You may meet and surpass your customers’ expectations by streamlining every step of your order fulfilment process.
Conclusion:
Businesses must utilise dynamic demand planning formulas in situations like these to precisely forecast inventory requirements and calculate the appropriate quantities of replenishment. Use the data to ascertain your top-selling items, the number of units sold, and the start of the holiday shopping festive season best practices.
Excel is frequently used by merchants to forecast demand, which explains why so many of them err. Unfortunately, this manual process is tedious, time-consuming, and prone to human error.
When a picker subsequently seeks to fill a client order for three brushes, they will only discover two in the trash since a receiving colleague marked three purple toothbrushes on a spreadsheet when only two were really delivered. Inventory visibility throughout the holiday festive season best practices makes sure that all channels accurately display the goods that are available for purchase.
