How Automated Shipping Software Can Reduce Your Warehouse Labor Costs

How Automated Shipping Software Can Reduce Your Warehouse Labor Costs

Global pandemic or not, labor costs are a critical component impacting eCommerce businesses’ shipping and fulfillment operations. In fact, a warehouse automation study cited in Adapt or Die, found that labor costs make up “65 percent of most warehouse facilities’ operating budgets.”

What’s more, COVID-19 has massively impacted how consumers shop. Consumers hesitant to return to in-store shopping are doing all of their shopping online, subsequently increasing shipping demands and the cost of labor to meet that demand. Now more than ever it is imperative that eCommerce businesses have an automated shipping solution that can help scale their business while also maximizing operational efficiency. 

So how do you determine if increased labor costs may be remedied by switching from basic shipping software to a more sophisticated shipping solution? 

You can start by identifying the pain points your fulfillment operation is experiencing as related to labor costs. Common factors that contribute to increased labor costs are:

• Hiring and onboarding processes - are you spending a lot of time and money hiring more workers for your shipping operations as a result of the COVID-accelerated eCommerce boom? How about during the holiday season?
• More orders = more people - as your business grows, do you need to hire more people to keep up with the workload? This doesn’t have to be the case. With shipping automation, more orders doesn’t have to equal more people
• Manual mistakes - are manual mistakes increasing in frequency or worse yet, causing order errors that are costing you customers?
• Costly scalability/overtime pay - bringing on more people to keep up with the demand of orders costs money. Without an advanced shipping solution that automates your workflows, you’re eating away at your bottom line

If some (or all) of these challenges are causing increased labor costs for your fulfillment operation, it's likely you have outgrown your basic shipping software. Contact a member of our team today to learn about making the switch to a software that scales with your business.