Tag Archive for: Peak

How to easily scale your mobile workforce and devices for the peak shopping season

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Retailers are under constant pressure to streamline processes and become more efficient while looking for ways to improve customer satisfaction levels. These challenges are heightened during the lead-up to the festive season when the flow of goods in and out of Distribution Centres (DCs) and stores increases, and processes and workflows are put under strain.

Coming out of the pandemic, many retailers are trying to maintain lean operations to help speed up business recovery and struggling to find enough workers to meet demand. The outcome is that these businesses generally run a core team of full-time staff throughout the year, but then they will look to employ seasonal workers on a short-term basis to meet the demands of the industry’s traditional peak season.

While this process allows businesses to manage staff costs throughout the year, it unfortunately also puts pressure on retailer and DC managers to ensure short-term workers understand the processes and technologies and can operate as accurately and efficiently as permanent employees. 

Given the heightened activity many retail and warehouse environments experience in the lead-up to the peak shopping season, and the challenges around trying to incorporate less experienced seasonal workers, what should Australian businesses know to help them prepare? 

Utilise technology to improve processes

Regardless of if a DC is operating in a quiet or busy period, the practice of processing an order and shipping the right product at the right time to the right destination remains the same. In periods of peak operation, the pressure to ensure accurate orders are being distributed is heightened. 

Returned incorrect or incomplete orders must be repacked and redistributed, which impacts customer satisfaction, with 63% of customers wanting improvements to the returns and delivery processes in retail and 67% wanting real-time visibility into their Christmas orders from the moment they are processed. 

Warehouse stocking, order fulfilment and backend order processes all need to be robust enough to handle a huge ramp up in demand. This demand spans many operational departments, and technology needs to be implemented across as range…

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Maintaining Retailer Cybersecurity During Peak Holiday Shopping Season

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Each year, retailers eagerly look forward to Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and the start of the holiday shopping season. And for good reason, since these few short days account for 20-30% of annual sales. In 2019, the weekend generated $7.4 billion in online sales and consumers spent $11 million per minute at the peak of online activity.

Cybercriminals look forward to the holiday season no less avidly. After all, more transactions means more opportunities for cyber thievery.

Retailers are a favored target of cybercriminals because they have personal information, including credit card information, for millions of people. That data is a treasure trove that can be readily sold or exploited by hackers.

Supply Chain Vulnerabilities

Retailers, of course, aim to provide as frictionless an experience as possible for their customers, based on the understanding that an easier purchase process makes it more likely that customers will buy – and return to buy more. This often means storing lots of sensitive customer information, including credit card information, to make shopping more convenient. It also increasingly means depending on technology solutions from a growing number of third-party vendors. According to one survey, companies allow 89 vendors, on average, to access their networks.

Supply chain vulnerabilities have led to major data breaches for retailers. Examples include:

  • . Cybercriminals made off with credit or debit card information for 40 million accounts in an attack that was routed through the company’s HVAC vendor.
  • Home Depot. Accessing the Home Depot network via a third-party vendor, attackers installed malware that enabled them to steal information for 56 million credit/debit card accounts.
  • Under Armour. 150 million accounts were compromised by an attack that came through the MyFitness Pal app, which Under Armour had acquired.
  • Saks, Lord & Taylor. Five million credit and debit card accounts were compromised by an attack via a cash register system vendor.

According to a report from IBM, the average cost of a data breach in the United States in 2020 was over $8 million. In some cases, such as if the breach results in a violation of European data privacy laws and triggers massive…

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