Too much inventory — To avoid costly out-of-stock items during the busiest day of the year, many companies choose to overstock to keep up with surprise demands. However, a lack of an organized inventory management system can lead to overcrowding, creating confusing pick paths, wasted space, lost products, and small packing spaces. These ultimately contribute to elevated worker stress and missed or inaccurate orders.

Unforgiving drop shipping — When shipping on behalf of other businesses such as Amazon or Walmart, shipping rules must be closely followed to ensure a continued business relationship. Errors such as missed delivery dates or wrong shipping labels can lead to millions in lost revenue as companies may reject you and favor your competitors.

High seasonal labor costs — Seasonal warehouse salaries are now averaging $15 per hour or more, not accounting for training time, which also may take longer if other inefficiencies are present. Furthermore, as expected with the holidays, seasonal labor costs also include overtime, weekend pay, and holiday pay.

Missed delivery dates — Labor shortage and lack of inventory transparency result in missed delivery dates as your workforce encounters more obstacles to pick, pack, and ship orders.

Inadequate picking routes — Longer travel routes and manual data entry both lead to inaccurate orders, which drive up costs with QC time, inventory issues, return fees, and customer dissatisfaction. A Tier I warehouse automation solution for order planning and release, combined with technologies such as voice-directed picking and AMR warehouse robots can be combined to yield dramatic picking efficiency.

Missing paperwork — Every aspect of your warehouse operation is important, down to tiny labels. Labels that have been printed incorrectly can result in undeliverable packages or the wrong product being delivered to the wrong person, causing headaches for your customer service team, and possibly a dangerous situation depending on the product that was delivered.

Overwhelmed delivery services — It is estimated that more than 3 billion packages are shipped between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Because every year brings an overwhelming increase in shipped orders, it is important to stay ahead of mailing dates stipulated by your courier service and avoid last-minute shipping at all costs.