Everything can be blamed on the shipping carrier when a package arrives late. But there are just as many delays that happen long before it ever gets to the carrier. Carriers do have their own issues that can cause delays, but the most significant driver of delays is what is going on inside your company.
If your fulfillment workflows are inefficient or disjointed, delays are more likely to occur, and the longer this inefficiency lasts, the longer it takes to get the packages into your customers’ hands– costing you revenue, upsetting customers, and damaging your brand.
In this, we will uncover the unseen delays within your shipping processes and ways improving your internal processes can deliver packages to your customers faster.
What Causes Shipping Delays?
Shipping involves much more than simply handing a box to a driver. In fact, it’s a complicated process that includes several essential steps:
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Receiving and processing the order
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Allocating inventory
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Picking and packing items
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Creating shipping labels
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Sending the package to the carrier
Delays can happen at any stage in this process. Although it’s easy to blame the shipping carrier for missed delivery windows, in many cases, the real problem starts long before the package is even picked up.
Where Internal Processes Break Down
Let’s look at some of the most common internal issues that lead to shipping delays:
1. Disorganized Inventory Management: One of the most common causes of delays is poor inventory management. If your inventory data is inaccurate or your stock isn’t properly organized, your team will struggle to get orders out on time.
For example, inaccurate stock levels, misplaced items, or manual systems that can’t keep up with demand are all roadblocks to efficient fulfillment.
Common signs of inventory problems:
- Stock levels don’t align with actual inventory
- Overselling or running out of stock unexpectedly
- Wasting time searching for missing products
These kinds of inventory problems directly affect fulfillment speed, ultimately causing your shipping to be delayed.
2. Manual Order Management: If you are still entering orders in by hand, or using multiple disconnected systems to fulfill customer orders, your fulfillment process is irreversible inefficient. Each additional step, not only adds time to the process, but raises the margin of error as well.
The challenges of manual order management include:
- Time wasted on manual data entry
- Orders slipping through the cracks due to human error
- Slow order processing as a result of disconnected tools
More steps and human touchpoints increase the likelihood that something will go wrong—whether that’s misplacing an order or mispacking it. When these errors happen, they delay shipping and frustrate customers.
Additional Internal Delays That Hurt Shipping
Suboptimal Picking and Packing: Even with your orders and inventory in alignment, the picking and packing process can still be inefficient, causing delays. Employees could spend too much of their time searching for products, make packing errors, or even have workflows that are not ideal resulting in lost time.
Here are some red flags that your picking and packing process needs improvement:
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Staff members walking long distances to retrieve products
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No scanning technology in place to ensure accuracy
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Lack of consistency in how orders are packed
These inefficiencies consume time, pushing back the expected shipping dates for your customers.
Disconnected Systems: Your inventory management, order processing, and shipping system should all be linked in today’s e-commerce environment. However, when these systems are not integrated, it can create delays and mistakes at several points in the process.
Problems caused by disconnected systems include:
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Orders not syncing properly across systems
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Manual creation of shipping labels
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Lack of real-time visibility into the order status
Fragmented systems slow down workflows, make it harder to track orders, and increase the chances of costly mistakes.
So, Is It Really the Carrier’s Fault?
Sometimes, yes. External factors like bad weather, high demand during the holiday rush, or disruptions on the carrier’s end can all contribute to delivery delays.
But more often than not, if shipping delays are a regular issue, the cause is internal. Therefore, when problems occur before the package even leaves your warehouse, it’s time to reassess your internal processes.
The Hidden Costs of Internal Delays
Shipping delays are more than just inconvenient. They cost you in several key areas that can ultimately harm your business. Let’s take a look at these hidden costs:
1. Sales Value Lost: Today’s consumers expect quick shipping — in fact, they may even expect same-day shipping. If shipping is slow or unreliable, customers might not choose your service to make their purchase and seek out a vendor/service with quicker shipping. A small delay can mean lost sales, especially due to customer frustration from excessive delays.
2. Increased Customer Support Costs: When delays happen, your customer service team will undoubtedly drown in “Where’s my order?” questions. This will take time away from dealing with other pressing issues in your company. Plus, it increases the costs of maintaining your support team.
3. Damaged Reputation: Customer experience is everything. If shipping delays become an ongoing issue, you will begin to see poor reviews and poor feedback about your business. Those customers that are unhappy with their delivery time will take to the internet to air their grievances. Once you have lost reputation, it is very hard to get it back.
4. Wasted Time: Internal inefficiencies lead to delays that eat away at your employee’s time, and your employees will spend a good portion of their time fixing errors, re-processing orders, cleaning up errors, etc., which lowers productivity and makes scaling the business harder. Your team is fighting fires due to poor workflows instead of fulfilling orders.
5. Operational Inefficiencies: As your business scales, inefficiencies in your fulfillment process continue to deepen. When you don’t have the right systems and workflows in place to handle your order fulfillment process, you will only lose the ability to meet demand as demand continues to rise and delays will increase.
How a Unified Workflow Fixes the Problem
While it might be easy to point fingers at the shipping carrier, you need to stop and think about the inefficiencies you have in your own processes. One way to create order within your workflow is to implement an integrated ERP system, such as Versa ERP..
Here’s how Versa ERP helps solve common shipping delay problems:
1. Unified System: Versa integrates your inventory, order management, and shipping systems into one seamless platform. This eliminates the need for multiple, disconnected tools and reduces the chances of errors and delays.
2. Automation: Versa ERP automates tasks like inventory updates, order processing, and shipping label creation. By cutting out manual work, Versa reduces the time it takes to fulfill an order and minimizes human errors.
3. Visibility: With Versa, you have full visibility over your orders and inventory in real time. This transparency helps you spot problems before they snowball into bigger delays, allowing you to stay ahead of any potential issues.
4. Scalability: Versa ERP is built to grow with your business. Whether you’re working with one warehouse or five, the system adapts to your needs, helping you manage multiple fulfillment centers, complex orders, and flexible shipping rules.
5. Efficiency: By reducing manual tasks and improving communication across teams, Versa helps your business fulfill orders more quickly and accurately. The result? Faster shipping and more satisfied customers.
How to Tell If Your Workflow Needs Improvement
If you’re unsure whether your internal processes are causing shipping delays, ask yourself the following questions:
- Are you still manually entering orders?
- Do you regularly notice variances in your stock versus inventory?
- Is your warehouse’s setup delaying pickup/packing?
- Do your order management or shipping systems integrate well?
- Is your customer support team constantly taking calls and inquiries from customers about shipping?
If you answered “yes” to more than one of the above questions, then it is likely you may have a fulfillment issue that could benefit from a process improvement project. If you answered “yes” to more than one of these questions, It’s a sign that your fulfillment process may need some serious work or improvement.
Industry Trends: Why is Workflow Automation Important?
With the growth of e-commerce, customers have heightened expectations for shipping and delivery. Two-day delivery, next-day delivery (or sooner) and other services have grown “commonplace” and those unable to meet these demands will have difficulty remaining competitive.
Automation, and more specifically, increased automation of fulfillment workflows, is not an optional feature; it is a must-have requirement for all organizations that conduct traceable and accountable work and requires others to do similar. With the proper tools in place, organizations can all be a little closer to living the future of customers’ expectations and optimizing their internal workflows.
Best Practices for Auditing Your Workflow
To help identify areas for improvement, use the following checklist when auditing your current workflow:
- Are your systems fully integrated?
- Can you track orders and inventory in real-time?
- Is your picking and packing process standardized across the warehouse?
- Do you have automation in place for routine tasks like labeling and order syncing?
- Are customer notifications automated to reduce support inquiries?
If you answered “no” to any of these, it’s time to take steps toward streamlining your processes.
The Results of Implementing Versa ERP
By implementing Versa ERP, businesses often experience significant improvements, such as:
- Faster fulfillment times due to streamlined workflows
- Real-time inventory visibility, reducing stock discrepancies and overselling
- Fewer mistakes in picking, packing, and labeling through automation
- Increased customer satisfaction from accurate delivery times
- Scalability to handle growth without adding more manual work
Understanding The Real Problems: Questions That Kept Coming Up
Why are there delays in shipping even when the carrier is on time??
The shipping delays often begin long before the package gets to the carrier. There might be a lot of reasons for delays like inventory issues, slow internal process setup, or inefficient warehouse processes. The carrier is usually the last part of the setup so if the internal processes are not functional, shipping delays will happen..
How can I tell if my processes are affecting shipping times??
Look for clues like having to run to find stock at the last moment, orders stuck in the processing stage, systems that are not connected to each other, and a customer service department getting reports of shipping issues not resolving in a timely manner.. If you’re in reaction mode more than the proactive side of fulfillment, the workflow is possibly the issue!
Can an ERP system like Versa really fix these issues?
Yes. Versa ERP integrates your order management, inventory, and shipping systems, creating a smooth, automated workflow that reduces manual tasks and minimizes errors. This leads to faster fulfillment and fewer delays.
Conclusion: Keep Your Fulfillment Process in Order
It’s easy to point fingers at the carrier when it comes to delays in shipment, but more often the biggest issue is something inside your own company. If there are delays happening so often that it is normal for you, you have to seriously question your process and if and how you can improve in those areas.
An integrated ERP solution like Versa can organize your fulfillment process, provide a solution to eliminate delays, and help you meet customer expectations more often.
Don’t accept subpar methods that are holding your business back. So are you ready to improve the Fulfillment Process and get rid of unnecessary delay? Buy into a system that connects everything for you and makes it easier!
Would you like to learn more?
Then we would like to hear from you! Contact us today to book an interactive demo of Versa ERP and learn how Versa will change your fulfillment activities for the better.
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