Holiday Prep For Peak Order Volumes

By David Anderson , Vice President of Marketing, SalesWarp

Okay, I know its March and the holidays are a long way off (or thankfully far behind), but it’s a well-known fact that the holidays are a key two-month time period for the retail industry. According to statistics from the National Retail Federation, sellers win as much as 40 percent of their annual sales during the holidays, which makes it absolutely essential that they run a tight ship during this peak period. Any failure, whether it’s related to infrastructure or company procedures, can result in significant opportunity loss and missed sales.

While mistakes and mishaps during the holidays need to be avoided at all cost, they can also be rather enlightening. The sheer number of people shopping during this two-month time frame and the volume of activity during the holidays can help illustrate many issues with a retailer's operations that may go hidden when not under the stress of peak periods. With the 2015 holiday season still many months away, now is the optimal time to look back at the 2014 season and use lessons learned during the peak period to drive meaningful change for the future. One area for improvement, especially for online and omnichannel retailers, is handling the massive uptick in order volume that happens during this time. There’s a lot you can do to prepare, and it’s best to start by taking a thorough review of the 2014 holiday performance.

Infrastructure review

The first step is to take a look at the infrastructure that powers the processes and overall operations. This means factors such as the servers your website and retail management software are hosted on, and performance in terms of information processing speed and website loading times. It doesn’t matter what tools retailers use if they get bogged down and are made functionally irrelevant as a result.

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