eCommerce Fulfillment Strategy Survey

I don’t know how I ended up on some companies list of people to contact for questions on eCommerce Fulfillment Operations. Most of the time, the inquiries are more annoying than interesting, but this time the inquiry was actually very interesting.

This company sent me a list of questions to consider. I didn’t answer them, but I thought I’d share those questions here. It is clear that whoever this company is, they are interested in specific warehouse management metrics for ecommerce fulfillment.

Here are my observations, based on the questions that they asked me:

• Whoever this company is, they are interested in reducing lead time from company to customer. But, also interested in reducing lead time from supplier to company.
• The company is interested in logistics issues such as the last day to order for guaranteed arrival by Christmas day. And, interested in what is different this year than from last year.
• These questions were especially interesting: this company is interested in multi-item orders and their characteristics. You don’t get that often. I found this interesting. This company clearly understands the unique difference between single item orders and multi item orders. Not many folks outside of fulfillment operations understands the subtle nuances.

Below are the survey questions. What do you think? Is this just another company trying to better understand their competitors or a company truly trying to improve by understand benchmarks? I think it’s a company truly trying to improve, but also wanting to learn from other companies in the eCommerce Fulfillment space.

1. The following is a very short survey about your peak-season shipping and fulfillment performance last year vs your peak-season shipping and fulfillment goals for this year. All information is confidential and will be reported in aggregate only. It will take less than five minutes to complete. Thank you for your participation
2. Do you have intimate knowledge of the key metrics related to your company’s peak-season online shipping and fulfillment metrics, including last year’s performance and this year’s goals?
3. Do you have budget responsibility for your company’s online shipping and fulfillment capability?
4. Average number of days to process (order to shipper) multi-item orders
5. Average number of days to ship (shipper to customer) for multi-item orders
6. What was the last day to order for guaranteed arrival by Christmas last year? What do you expect it will be this year?
7. What was the percentage of multi-item orders that arrived on time last year? What do you estimate it will be this year?
8. What was the single biggest challenge to delivering multi-orders on time during peak season (Cyber Monday to Christmas Eve) last year? Select only one.
   • left the dc too late and shipping was not upgraded
   • carrier fault
   • non guaranteed shipping method (smartpost, surepost)
   • did not hae the inventory
9. What specific investments, if any, have you made to improve your peak-season delivery of online orders?
10. What is the single most important investment you have made in the past 12 months to improve your peak-season delivery of online orders?
11. What is the biggest shipping- and fulfillment-related tactic your competitors could pursue that would negatively impact your holiday sales this year?