Name: Tenaxx Logistics
Address: 10707 25 ST NE, Calgary, AB, T3N1A6, CA
Telephone: 519-260-2738
Price range: $$

Prepare your Supply Chain for Peak Holiday Season

Experts say that most companies make more than 20 percent of their annual revenue during the peak holiday season- but when service failures occur during peak season, it can cost you a great amount in terms of delayed in customer shipments as well as stock-outs due to poor inventory management.

How retailers can address supply chain challenges?

Stock-outs put a great impact on your brand reputation and future business activities. Forcing your customers to buy a product – which is out of stock in your warehouse – from a competitor diminishes their faithfulness. The other challenge comes up when consumers who buy online and return the item in-store, called Omni-Channel consumers, put the pressure on retailers to have products both at the store and in the warehouse, in the right quantity and at the right time.
To address these challenges, retailers are trying modern distribution strategies that not only improve forecasts but also facilitate inventory movement across multiple shopping channels. Retailers may need the services of a third-party logistics provider on the basis of the distance between your store and the warehouse. Here are some tips that will help ensure good relations with your suppliers, 3PL provider, and customers:

1. Inform your 3PL vendor about new changes and purchase orders

As a retailer, you should keep constant communication with your third party logistics vendors and suppliers and inform them of any changes in purchase orders and keep them updated. For instance, informing them of advance shipping notices, or any other changes regarding receipt items, quantities, or dates on purchase orders, will give the 3PL provider enough time to prepare and deliver the item as per your needs.

2. Make room for flexibility with your carrier

You cannot always plan your project sales accurately using data from previous years. Make sure your 3PL provider takes the responsibility for last-minute, just-in-time deliveries to your store to avoid any stock-outs of certain items. To face such unforeseen incidents, you should develop a relationship with your 3PL vendor that allows for flexibility and can adequately handle last-minute changes.

3. Accurate Forecasting

Make realistic projections for order volumes and calls by hour, day, week or month in advance to ensure your orders are always available in the right quantities and at the right time and to give your 3PL provider enough time to prepare for it.

Final Thoughts

With these wonderful tips, you can get prepare for the peak holiday season and manage your inventory more efficiently. If you’re looking for 3PL warehousing services, look no further than Tenaxx Logistics. We have the space, services, modern equipment, and commitment to customer satisfaction needed to make your transition to the world of warehousing a smooth one. To know more about our warehousing services, contact us today.

What is Drop Shipping?

In the dropshipping process, the online seller doesn’t keep the products it sells in stock. Instead, when a customer buys some items from a store, the store purchases the item from a third party and has it shipped directly to the end customer. As a result, the merchant never handles the products it sells.

The major difference between dropshipping and the standard retail method is that the selling merchant doesn’t keep the products in inventory. The merchant purchases inventory when required from a third party – usually a wholesaler or manufacturer – to fulfill customers’ orders.

In this setup, the seller doesn’t need to invest in purchasing inventory for its e-commerce business. In this case, the manufacturer will charge the seller a higher wholesale price for each product, in exchange for handling the warehouse and shipping individual orders rather than shipping to the seller in bulk. Although the e-commerce seller does not any product in stock, on the seller’s website it looks as if they are selling their own products. The seller handles everything from the marketing of the products and to the customer handling, while the manufacturer provides warehouse and shipping services.

The process for dropshipping is as follows:

1. Show items offered by one or more drop shipping companies in your online store.
2. A customer chooses the product and places an order in your store.
3. You forward the order to the manufacturer for handling the shipment of the order to the customer.
4. The manufacturer processes the order and ships it directly to your customer.

With this kind of retail fulfillment method, the seller doesn’t need to purchase the inventory and keeps it in the stock. This is a key feature of using the dropshipping process for e-commerce businesses.
Drop Shipping is a great option for sellers who do not have enough capital to buy their own inventory, or who don’t want to handle warehouse and logistics related work. You can also place a wider selection of products using drop shipping for your business. It can also be a low-risk way to test new products before you bring them into inventory.

Choose Drop Shipping or Third-Party Fulfillment for Your Ecommerce Business?

Dropshipping and third-party fulfillment are different e-commerce, business models. Both involve an outsourced order fulfillment process, but the services provided by drop shippers and fulfillment centers are quite different.
Dropshipping and third-party fulfillment fulfill different needs for e-commerce sellers. Your business may choose to outsource order fulfillment to both of these types of providers at different times, depending on your business needs.

Call Tenaxx Logistics for Your Order Fulfillment Services

Want to find out more about our order fulfillment services? Contact Tenaxx Logistics today by filling out our online form or call us at 519-260-2738 and let us know what your business requirement. We’ll talk to you about possible shipping requirements and give you an accurate estimate for the services you need.

What are the Risks Related to Cross Docking?

What is Cross Docking?

Cross-docking is an order fulfillment strategy where products from a supplier or manufacturing unit are shipped directly to a customer or retail chain without any need for mid storage of goods in the warehouse. It is a process of receiving products through an inbound dock and then transferring them across the dock to the outbound transportation dock. It consists of trucks and dock doors in inbound and outbound sides with minimal storage space. The process starts when inbound products are arrived through transportation such as trucks/trailers and are assigned to receiving dock on one side of the cross dock terminal. The goods are sorted and screened to identify their end destinations and moved to the other end of cross dock terminal with the help of a forklift, pallet truck, and any other transportation medium. After completing the loading of goods at the outbound dock, the products delivered to the end customers.

Major Risks Related to Cross Docking

1. Implementing the cross-docking strategy in the warehouse required capital investment. This can translate into a warehouse redesign to save space for a conditioning area and/or the adoption or designing of a warehouse management system to assist with cross-docking tasks.
2. Cross-docking fully relies on a team to transfer items from inbound to the outbound dock, organizations need to be trustworthy of their suppliers’ ability to deliver the right products in right condition on time to the cross-docking terminal.
3. A number of Transport Carriers needed to take full benefits of the cross-docking system. A sufficient number of transport carriers will be needed for the delivery of goods. Since the operation is mainly dependant on trucking, there is an increased cost, need for parking space for trucks in the warehouse, and need for enough docks to implement the system.
4. It requires time for proper planning and execution: without coordination between supply and demand and proper planning, cross-docking is not suggested in the warehouse. Therefore, in the global computation, cross-docking should save enough time to cover its application in operational planning.

Need Help with cross docking?

If you want to know more about cross-docking and how Tenaxx Logistics can help your business contact us today!

Achieving Speed & Accuracy in the Last Mile Delivery

For years, retailers have focused on increasing delivery speed when it came to the last mile delivery to differentiate with service. In 2005, Amazon changed the complete game when they launched their Amazon Prime service, which guaranteed two-day delivery to customers. They introduced this service with the primary goal of increasing market share, while delivery costs and how they impacted margin were often not considered. Luckily, they had the financial backing and size to do so and quickly, second-day delivery was so successful that it soon became the industry standard.

Large retailers have further evolved the specificity of delivery by offering specific time slots, forcing competitors to reconsider their delivery methods. Many of those retailers have begun to implement new practices to design a more optimized approach for achieving speed and accuracy in last mile delivery. The organizations that have been successful are the ones that are repurposing their existing networks in innovative ways such as implementing “dark stores” that only hold stock for online orders, using stock rooms in retail stores as delivery points for online orders or picking stock ordered online from physical stores to ship to customers.
Although consumers today expect – and demand – quick delivery options, many retail companies don’t realize that speed alone is not the answer. Organizations that have adopted delivery strategies that emphasize accuracy over speed have gained a competitive edge, but face challenges when it comes to finding a feasible route to provide those precise deliveries that make sense for the types of products they sell.

New technologies, such as drones, promise to offer silver-bullet solutions for retailers’ accuracy challenges. However, these emerging technologies are still too new and could serve as distractions from design solutions that will work in the short-term. They also have their limitations in harsher climates with wind, snow, ice, rain, fog and extreme temperatures, so they currently do not offer a broad-based solution. Though drone delivery or delivery by a self-driving fleet will impact the supply chain industry down the line, companies now should focus on how they can transform their supply chains by implementing more creative strategies to highlight their existing assets. By doing so, organizations can improve the accuracy of their delivery options to meet consumers’ growing expectations and demands.