Fulfilment tips to improve Ship On Time

It is important for sellers to ensure a good ship-on-time (SOT) rating, as buyers may compare how well-performing a seller is on the such metrics, which could help determine their purchase. This is especially if they are comparing similar items from different sellers. Since a buyer can view your SOT performance, it will be good to maintain a high, positive score to influence them. In this article you can find the following tips to improve your SOT rating.

1. Inventory Management

(i) Improve forecasting to understand historical sales trends to better manage stock level in preparation for Campaigns and Flash deals

(ii) Clean and neat storage to allow pickers to navigate easily for picking and faster fulfilment with less errors. It may minimize the product damages and improve shelf life of products in a neat store

(iii) Accurate Inventory levels to avoid out of stock instances and maintaining good inventory sync and timely update especially if sellers are selling through multiple platforms. We do recommend sellers to capture latest stock levels on a weekly basis

(iv) Minimize overselling which negatively impact Ship-On-Time and customer experience when your buyers have to wait a longer period to receive their orders and may potentially incur a bad review or order cancellation

2. Order Prioritization

Adopt First In First Out (FIFO) for your order management by checking the order creation date and handover the packages within the Ship-On-Time SLA countdown timer on the order management page. This gives you a better gauge on the remaining time left to ensure your parcels are ready to ship.

3. Efficient picking and packing

(i) Optimize a pick path to reduce travelling time,

• Batch Technique allows the picker to pick multiple orders with the same SKU at once. This reduces to the travel time between the SKU and the packing station, increasing the productivity. Best suited for SKU with small dimensions to allow efficiency.

• Zone Picking assigns pickers to specific zones within the pick area and responsible for picking specific SKUs located within their zone for each order. For orders that consist of multiple SKUs, the order will pass through different zones also known as ‘Pick and Pass’.

(ii) Getting enough manpower

• Assign dedicated staff for each process (e.g. Inbounding, picking, Quality check) to expedite the process as they are accustomed to the requirements of the tasks. Incentives pickers to motivate faster efficiency are good practices you may adopt.

(iii) Packing Guidelines

• Do adopt proper packaging guidelines to avoid lost and damages to your products.

(iv) Taping and Labelling

• Consider using pressure sensitive tapes (e.g. electrical tape, duct tape)

• Double-H Tape carton boxes and heavier parcels

• Shipping labels to be affixed securely to avoid lost mails

4. Timely update of ‘Ready To Ship’ Status

(i) Update your order status to ‘Ready to Ship’ before handover

• Courier partners will not be able to process and scan your parcels if the orders are not updated to the correct status

• Parcel will be returned to seller and may impact your ship on time

(ii) Don’t click RTS too early

• Fake RTS will result in missed pickups and courier partners may not be rescheduled in time for your next pickup

Note: For sellers on J&T, if the parcel is updated to ‘Ready to Ship’ prior to handover, J&T will update the tracking number as failed pickup as they are unable to scan the parcels successfully. Sellers will be required to reschedule a pick up in the J&T portal for the next pickup on the failed parcels.

5. Swift handover to the accurate courier partner

(i) Always be present and ensure that parcels are scanned on the spot to ensure that all parcels are accounted for and no parcels are lost during handover.

(ii) Once the parcels are scanned for handover, it will conclude the Ship-On-Time and reflect accordingly on your SOT performance.

6. Check on your parcels that did not meet Ship-On-Time

(i) You will be able to see parcels that were not set to 'Ready to Ship' and handed over on time under 'Order Management'  > On Time Fulfillment Rate

(ii) Use the information in the dashboard to improve your fulfilment practices

(Published on 29 May 2020)
(Updated on 27 Jul 2022)