You’re no stranger to logistics if you’ve implemented a micro-fulfillment strategy. It’s not easy to pull off ship from store operations and the like. There are often wildly different order volumes from day to day, and as eCommerce grows, things are only going to get more hectic.
At Veryable, we’ve seen the effects that demand volatility has on companies, as we provide a marketplace for on-demand labor to solve this problem. That’s why we’re sharing what we’ve learned about how on-demand labor fits your situation specifically.
In this article, you’ll learn how on-demand labor fits well with micro-fulfillment strategies such as ship from store to enable flexibility and cost efficiencies for your business.
Inherently, micro-fulfillment strategies will see different levels of demand from day to day at each facility. Because the goal of micro-fulfillment is to get the products as close to the origin of the order as possible, there is less bundling together of orders to create a consistent baseline of order volume.
This means that you need a different approach to labor. If the work that needs to be done varies from day to day, wouldn’t it be more cost effective to match your labor capacity to the work?
Consider what happens if you don’t match your capacity to demand. If it’s a day with low order volume, there will be workers standing around with nothing to do, which is not only a waste of the company’s money, but a waste of the workers’ time. On the other hand, if there’s a day with twice as many orders than usual, you won’t be able to keep up, which affects service levels.
Now consider what that could look like with on-demand labor. There would be workers available to come in quickly to help you meet demand. Imagine finding out your order volume is going to be twice as high as usual tomorrow, so you find on-demand workers to come help you fill only those orders. Then, when order volume returns to normal, you simply stop inviting workers.
With instant flexible capacity enabled by on-demand labor, daily demand volatility is an easier problem to solve.
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Workers available on demand for your operation can assist with logistics work such as picking orders, packing them, and loading them for delivery.
Because most micro-fulfillment or ship from store strategies are back-of-house operations, many Operators using Veryable would be familiar with these environments from their experience in warehouse environments.
Getting started with on-demand labor is easy. You can sign up for a business profile with Veryable and post your first work opportunity today for free. The whole process will take you less than an hour.
Create a free business profile today to explore our platform.
