Sales Growth Started Causing Bottlenecks
Restaurant Equippers initially built its business selling out of its brick-and-mortar locations, but it experienced a further boost in sales as consumers found its online store. Order volumes grew to the point that its fulfillment operations had hit a ceiling in capacity.
The company used several systems to process orders. Because the staff toggled between so many different screens, processing a shipment took about four minutes. “The work was paper-driven, time-consuming, and required too many touches by the staff,” said Dave Cox, Restaurant Equippers chief national sales and fulfillment officer.
Rather than considering new facilities or adding shifts, Restaurant Equippers decided to upgrade its warehouse systems, choosing the HighJump warehouse management system (WMS) and EasyPost Enterprise Shipping shipping system.
Faster Shipping With EasyPost Enterprise
Restaurant Equippers implemented EasyPost Enterprise Shipping as a black box solution that receives order data from the WMS according to custom-designed workflows. The new HighJump/EasyPost Enterprise solution has reduced shipment processing times from four minutes to a few seconds per shipment, a 97% drop.
Since implementing the new solution, Restaurant Equippers has significantly streamlined their order fulfillment process by consolidating packing and shipping stations, processing orders from a single screen, eliminating manual data entry, optimizing the handling of single-item orders, and implementing batch processing when appropriate.
The Results: Increased Productivity and Efficiency
Automating shipping has been a game-changer. With a single barcode scan, they’re done in seconds. Then EasyPost Enterprise processes the order, converts it to a shipment, and updates the WMS and ERP systems with the details.
Restaurant Equippers has seen significant improvements to their shipping processes, including the following:
- 25% increase in productivity and capacity. They’ve automated their processes, significantly reduced their reliance on paper, and increased shipment processing speed from four minutes to a few seconds per order, a 97% drop in time spent. Staff no longer needs to spend any time walking between packing and shipping stations.
- Rapid training. Employees can be trained in 30 minutes, compared to weeks of training required for the legacy processes. In less than an hour, they’re trained and processing shipments.
- Accurate, up-front freight rates during the sales process. With products ranging from kitchen cutlery to large commercial refrigerators, shipping costs are important to know up front. With all their carriers integrated through EasyPost Enterprise Shipping, Restaurant Equippers can quickly provide customers with accurate freight costs whether they’re shopping online, on the phone, or in a store.
The EasyPost Enterprise Shipping/HighJump solution has proven it can handle peak season shipping volumes. “Thankfully, we’d gone live on the new solution a few weeks before the pandemic restrictions hit, and we were able to handle the sudden, dramatic increase in online orders,” said Cox. “I shudder to think how we’d have managed without it.”
Cox believes those increased orders are here to stay. “Peak season volumes are now an everyday volume for Equippers,” he said. “Once buyers find us online, they become repeat customers.”
