the differences, Graham says. Once a company has this information, it can decide if, for instance, more training is needed or if some types of orders generally encounter roadblocks. “It’s like a fuel gauge in a car,” Graham says. The reporting tools also can help managers assess how much order volume can grow before they need to bring on additional workers. GROWING SHIPPING VOLUME Descartes’ ShipRush solution, which JOELLE Collection also implemented, is a widely integrated and quick-to-deploy multi-carrier parcel and less-than-truckload (LTL) shipping platform. It allows businesses to grow their shipping volume through advanced automation capabilities, a business rules engine, and a set of APIs (application programming interfaces) for rating, shipping and tracking. The system connects e-commerce companies with the parcel and LTL carriers of their choice, using their own negotiated rates or rate discounts available through the platform. Two common shipping challenges are picking the right carrier and determining optimal service level combinations. In some warehouses, it’s not unusual for packages to ship before anyone has checked how quickly they need to arrive at their destination. That can mean shippers pay for faster service than they actually need. The Shiprush system leverages business rules to identify an optimal combination of carrier and service level combination. Graham provides an example: A company sells T-shirts directly to consumers, so its packages tend to be lightweight and headed for residential addresses. ShipRush can identify the transportation method best suited for these types of packages. In 2021, before it began working with Descartes, JOELLE Collection had implemented a new inventory management system. This helped the team get comfortable with the basics of system implementation projects, which helped speed the process of
Descartes’ solutions help JOELLE Collection deliver quality customer service by focusing on critical fulfillment practices, such as shipping orders on time and providing order visibility.
implementing Descartes’ warehouse management and parcel shipping solutions, Courchesne says. In addition, the company’s warehouse had been mapped, and it already had all the necessary equipment. In part because these steps had already occurred, JOELLE Collection and Descartes went from training to implementation to full production in about four months. The solutions went live in September 2022. READY, SET, IMPLEMENT A typical Peoplevox implementation starts with a kickoff call, Graham says. Next steps include preparing for implementation, migrating data from legacy systems, con guring the system to customer work ows and business rules, and then training from end to end. After JOELLE Collection selected Descartes, the two companies held weekly training sessions focused on helping users get comfortable with the software. It doesn’t take long—often, new employees can become productive in less than one hour, Graham says. After training is completed, Descartes transitions to the User Acceptance Testing (UAT) phase. At this point, the customer is hands-on and using the solution to validate its use cases.
When all integrations have been tested, planning starts for “Go Live.” Descartes supports customers through their go-live date and then for a few weeks after that. This helps ensure everything is running smoothly and the client is maximizing the solution’s ef ciency. Together, PeopleVox and ShipRush help direct-to-consumer brands like JOELLE Collection deliver quality customer service by focusing on several critical ful llment practices, Graham says. These include con rming every order, shipping each order on time, even during peak seasons; shipping the right items in the right quantities to the right customers; and providing customers with visibility into the status of their orders, until they’ve been received.
REAPING THE BENEFITS The Descartes solutions enable
JOELLE Collection to ship three times more parcels daily with the same number of employees. “It gave us real-time visibility over our inventory levels and allowed us to receive additional inventory in real time,” Courchesne says. “The system also helps us produce multiple operational reports and evaluate employee performance while controlling operations remotely,” she adds. n
March 2023 • Inbound Logistics 79
Powered by FlippingBook