Peak Season 2024: How to Optimize Your Warehouse Logistics in E-commerce

1. The next peak season is coming: This is what you can expect in the peak season 2024
2. Preparing your warehouse logistics for the peak season
3. These tools will help you prepare for peak season
4. Prepare, optimize and above all: digitize

Every year comes peak season: The high-revenue Peak Season is particularly important for retailers. Many generate a large part of their annual sales during this phase. This is also unlikely to change significantly in 2024, despite the uncertain economic situation. For 2024, the German Retail Association's (HDE) predicts a sales volume of 3.5 per cent, which is not a lot, but at least a small growth compared to 2023. So Black Friday and Christmas shopping are also given for 2024.

To ensure your online store comes through this year's peak season smoothly, we'll show you how to prepare your warehouse for the shopping onslaught. On top, there are helpful tool tips for your warehouse management, because: preparation is key.

The next peak season is coming: This is what you can expect in the peak season 2024

Inflation, economic imbalances, delivery bottlenecks: First the corona pandemic and then the Ukraine war challenged trade in many areas. At times, the B2C business was seriously affected. We remember. And yet, many people still buy, and that continues to happen online, as the HDE's sales forecast shows. According to the Capgemini Consumer Demand Survey, this may not happen automatically in the future: Consumers want to save costs and reconsider purchase decisions. They also expect brands to help them through this challenging time - for example, by offering discounts.

The Capgemini study has also found: Fast delivery is important. So important in fact, that many consumers are willing to pay more for it. So, it's time to optimize your storage and delivery processes and get your goods to your customers as quickly as possible. Because from a trade perspective, peak season is almost upon us: shops should already be preparing in the summer for the busiest time of the year. With some regional or cultural deviations, the peak season is also starting more and more often in Germany with Halloween. If you sell appropriate products, you can expect a big plus around October.

These dates are important during the Peak Season besides Halloween:

Singles’ Day on November 11, 2024: The “day of the singles” is the Chinese equivalent of Valentine's Day and is becoming increasingly relevant online in our country. On Singles’ Day, online shops attract customers with attractive discounts.

Black Friday and Cyber Week 2024: Cyber Week is one of the most intensive-selling times of the year. It starts with Black Friday on November 29, 2024. The day after Thanksgiving is all about sales. The fact that the business is profitable has been recognized by retailers in this country as well and they are boosting their business with numerous offers. Black Friday is followed by Cyber Monday on December 2, 2024: this day is all about online shopping, while on Black Friday even stationary retail invites you to shop. These two dates can be seen as the starting shot for the Christmas business. So, make sure in time that your stock levels can withstand the onslaught and that your warehouse is well positioned.

Saint Nicholas' Day on December 6, 2024: It's a bit inconspicuous, but Christmas shopping is in full swing from Saint Nicholas' Day onwards.

Christmas or rather: Peak Season’s Peak: Being nervous about Christmas depends on the type of person. That's why there are two dates during the pre-Christmas period that you should have in mind besides Black Friday and Cyber Monday: The last Monday and the last Saturday before Christmas are considered particularly strong sales days. In total, the time from the end of November is the most important for many (online) retailers and accounts for a large part of the annual sales.

However, Peak Season is not only from October to December. Other occasions can also lead to increased shopping traffic. Those you should keep in mind include:

• Amazon Prime Days (usually mid-July)
• Summer and winter sales
• Back-to-School and school enrollment after summer vacations
• Major discount and influencer campaigns

Preparing your warehouse logistics for the peak season

In order for your shop to make it through the high season successfully, you should prepare as well as possible for the rush. One of the most important factors is your warehouse logistics, which should always be optimally set up, especially during high-sales times. In the first step, you should analyze past peak seasons and thus make forecasts for future peaks. This way you ensure that you have particularly popular items in sufficient quantities in stock. Another important key figure is your return rate: With it, you can calculate in advance which goods you need to reorder in smaller quantities because a part of them comes back as returns and can be added to orders again.

Order received: how picking and picking work during peak season

In order for your customers to receive their ordered goods quickly during the peak season, you should consider how you want to assemble them. Both the type of picking and the pick strategy play a role. During the picking process, the ordered items are put together per order. A distinction is made between single and batch picking:

• Single item picking: Here, each order is processed individually. This approach is suitable for shops with a low order volume, because it cannot be scaled, which can be a disadvantage especially during peaks.
• Batch picking: As the name suggests, multiple orders are processed and assembled simultaneously. Your warehouse management system (WMS) or your e-commerce order fulfillment solution selects the routes for your employees so they are optimally guided through the warehouse.

In addition, you should consider whether you want to carry out your batch picking in one or two stages: In the former, also known as “rolling picking”, you assign the items to boxes that correspond to the respective order and then all you have to do is prepare them for shipping. In two-stage picking, you first collect all the items for any number of orders and then divide them into the respective packages in the second step.

Picking describes the process of removing goods from the warehouse. Your pick strategy determines how your employees are guided to the ordered items. The classic is pick-by-paper: Printed order or delivery notes show which products are required for which order. More modern and efficient is the pick-by-scan method: so-called mobile data acquisition devices (MDE) or handheld terminals represent the pick lists digitally and guide your employees optimally through the warehouse. By scanning, they can then confirm that they have taken the corresponding products. This ensures everything is properly documented and you save a lot of paper and effort – not only during the peak season.

Cross docking is another method to save time, especially during the high season: After goods receipt, you distribute items directly to existing open orders instead of storing them. This way they go directly from the goods receipt to the shipping table without any detours, which is particularly worthwhile for small quantities.

In warehousing, it's not necessarily about keeping everything tidy. On the contrary: With chaotic storage, it's more important to store items so that they can be found quickly and to make the best possible use of storage space. Graphic: Descartes pixi

5 quick tips for your warehouse logistics during peak season

1. You should keep top items in goods receipt during peak season. This way, you can directly assign incoming articles to open orders. Cross docking indeed.
2. Appoint an employee to ensure that there are always sufficient boxes and shipping materials available. This way, someone is always providing a replenishment at the packing table, preventing it from coming to a standstill.
3. Look at which items sold particularly well before peak season and store them close to the shipping stations. The keyword here is relocation.
4. Prepare for returns by processing them at a designated location. This way you can quickly reintegrate them into the inventory and assign them to open orders.
5. Last but not least: Take good care of your employees, especially during peaks – but also at other times. Provide enough nerve food and support them as much as possible in keeping a cool head during peak times.

Well prepared with a Warehouse Management Solution (WMS)

A Warehouse Management Solution (WMS) can help you keep track of your warehouse and its capacities during the preparation and during peak season. Such systems can, for example, tell you the optimal storage locations for certain items and support you in filling your warehouse optimally. And: If everything is documented in an IT-supported system, your employees always know where they can find the goods they need. This speeds up shipping and work processes and makes them efficient, especially during peak season. With WMS or Warehouse Management Systems (WMS) you can quickly train seasonal workers and save your team long distances and complicated searching.

Modern warehouse logistics systems also record which items, for example, are purchased how often or frequently together. In the ABC analysis carried out during this process, the solution identifies the fast and slow-moving items in the warehouse. This allows you to use system-supported sorting by A, B and C items for your warehouse. The WMS will then determine the best storage locations so that your team can pick orders in a way that optimizes their routes. Easy!

In order for your customers' orders to be quickly on their way, some WMS create pick list profiles: Different parameters help you to summarize orders on a single pick list – for example based on the cut-off times of different shipping service providers. In this way, you ensure that as many packages as possible for a certain logistics service provider are packed and ready for pickup when he arrives.

These tools will help you prepare for peak season

At OMR Reviews we know that software and tools make life easier. So it should probably not come as a surprise that we also have some tool tips “in stock” for your warehouse. Warehouse Management Systems (WMS) or Warehouse Management Systems (WMS) help you to keep track and use your warehouse space as efficiently as possible. The systems know what is where, are aware of the exact stock of your goods and tell you the best storage locations for your products. And you'll notice that not only during peak seasons.

Which system is right for you also depends on your requirements. We have picked out a few WMS fo you that could be of interest, and introduce one of them to you in more detail:

• pixi WMS
• 360ᵉ by e-velopment
• Pickware
• Zoho Inventory
• active ilos

pixi WMS is a warehouse management system for retailers in almost all sectors with a B2C focus and for fulfillment service providers. The system can be linked to Shopware, Shopify, Magento, WooCommerce and OXID via bidirectional interfaces and thus bring order and clarity to your warehouse. pixi WMS comes with many practical functions that make life easier for you and your employees:

• Keep track of which and how many items leave your warehouse and arrive, thanks to correct warehouse stocks and automated returns management.
• Your customers receive automated notifications via email about the order and shipping status of their order.
• Use intelligent pick strategies and process your customers' orders much faster, error-free and with less effort.
• Access all important KPIs for your company in a dashboard and choose reports from numerous standard evaluations. This way you can make successes and to-dos visible to your employees.
• Use pixi WMS's SOAP API to flexibly connect it to other systems and benefit from optimal, automated data exchange.

pixi WMS shows your team the best routes through the warehouse and allows you to document the goods taken out thanks to scanning function. Graphic: Descartes pixi

To reduce your employees' walking distances, pixi WMS assembles the pick lists in such a way that your team can pick orders with the least amount of walking distance. The WMS knows where everything is stored and guides the pickers on an optimal path through the warehouse using digital pick lists when using the pixi Mobile Warehouse App. This not only saves paper and precious time, but also ensures that taken out goods are always correctly recorded using scanning function. This so-called mobile data acquisition (MDE) can also be handled simply using standard Android smartphones using the pixi Mobile App. The system also enables image-assisted picking, which is particularly helpful during hectic peak seasons. And: thanks to intuitive operation and continuous process security, even new employees can help quickly and easily.

With pixi WMS, you don't have to worry about the optimal picking method for your orders: The system enables you various forms of batch picking (Multi-Order-Picking) and lets your employees pick items from several similar orders with the least amount of walking distance. This way they can, for example, conveniently pick all orders that are shipped with a certain shipping service provider at the same time and get them going quickly. That not only makes your customers happy during peak season, but especially saves the strength of your employees.

Why this is important is demonstrated, among others, by pixi WMS customer SportSpar.de: During the peak times, the volume of shipments of the sports equipment expert increases quite often to 6,000 packages per day. If you lose control here, you will quickly fall behind.

Prepare, optimize and above all: digitize

Peak Season is coming – this is even safe in times like these. Black Friday and Christmas are also beckoning this year and will stimulate people to buy. Despite noticeable and forecasted consumption restraint, you should therefore get yourself and your warehouse ready for the high season and optimize, digitize and automate processes. This is also recommended by Capgemini based on the results of the Consumer Demand Survey.

Good warehouse logistics increase your efficiency, prepare you for peak seasons and create more satisfaction among your employees. Because: We generally prefer to work where processes run optimally. Smart Warehouse Management Systems like pixi WMS save your employees unnecessary distances in the already dynamic warehouse everyday life, help to avoid mistakes and increase the Customer Experience in E-commerce. Win-win-win indeed.