Mintsoft & The Fulfilment Experts: How TFE Prepare for ‘Silly Season’
We caught up with Tadeas & Laszlo to see how peak season affects The Fulfilment Experts.
Who are The Fulfilment Experts?
The Fulfilment Experts (TFE) are a 3PL based in Peterlee. They recently expanded into the EU, with a 20,000 square foot warehouse in Prague.
What Does Peak Season Look Like for TFE?
Peak season, or as the team calls it ‘silly season ’, is when TFE are tested the most. Usually starting in September, the team take the learnings from previous peak seasons and improves processes to ensure everything runs smoothly. During this time, stock is starting to arrive, and they start preparing the warehouse, ensuring they’re fully prepared for the increase in orders.
“Silly season is good, but it is chaotic. It’s about being prepared. I think that's the most important thing, both on our front and both on the customer's front. It's our responsibility to help them [customers] prepare for it as well. Mintsoft helps a lot with that in terms of the reporting.”
- Laszlo Nortje, Co-Owner.
The customer expectations don’t change during peak season. Their customers still expect parcels to be dispatched and delivered on time, even with an increase in orders. Around 40% of their orders that come in during peak season are 24-to-48-hour delivery. To meet demand, the team have extended their shifts, sometimes to 24 hours, to ensure all orders are dispatched on time.
For all the orders to leave the warehouse in a timely fashion, the team has been contacting couriers earlier, booking in extra slots or making deliveries themselves.
“[Peak Season] non-negotiables are having enough staff in the warehouse, trained staff in the warehouse, and also the warehouse being ready for extra picking and extra packing. So we have to have enough hardware; we have to have enough equipment in the warehouse for what we expect to come.
We have to plan extra shifts. And we also plan for extra, extra shifts if that doesn't happen. So, we're always trying to have a plan B and C just in case, because if we're not prepared, then it's never going to work.”
– Tadeas Gencur, Co-Owner.
Peak season challenges
The biggest challenge TFE faces during peak season is staffing. If there isn’t enough staff or they haven’t been trained, mistakes happen.
First, they look at the core team and ensure they are fully trained. Previously, their staff have been covering more than one position. However, more recently, staff have been focusing on one area of the operation – for example, picking items.
If they still don’t have enough staff to manage the increase in orders, they bring in temporary staff with the intention that they become a permanent member of the team.
How Mintsoft Helps with Peak Season
Full customer transparency
Before TFE, Laszlo and Ted had ecommerce businesses and used a 3PL. However, their experience wasn’t good due to a lack of communication, invoicing that didn’t make any sense and being locked out of the system. Due to this experience, they’ve made sure that their customers have a full view of what’s going on, using the 3PL Client Portal, and giving them full access to vital information – from statistics to making edits to an order.
With this, the team also offer training to their customers on how to use Mintsoft. This is split into two sessions:
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A basic overview covering the dashboards, how to add products and create ASNs
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How to analyse data, generate reports and schedule reports
“That [3PL Client Portal] is one of the biggest selling points. When we tell our customers that they are effectively in the warehouse. They have absolute coverage of everything that's going on. There’s no need really to reach out and ask if something's been delivered because if it's been delivered, it's marked as delivered, or if it hasn't, it's marked as waiting for delivery.
I think it just takes a lot of pressure off them and gives them confidence to deal with us because they're managing a lot of it themselves. It's very easy for them to raise queries. I think the fact that they can make immediate changes is beneficial”
- Laszlo Nortje, Co-Owner.
Batch Scheduling
Batch scheduling has been a game changer for TFE. Previously, creating batches used to take three to four hours, whereas now it takes only 5 minutes.
“We tried a new module called Batch Scheduler. That was a game changer for us because we no longer had to create batches ourselves. But now we could be more efficient with the creation of the batches at a certain time of the day. So the pickers always have something to pick. They don't have to wait for a supervisor to create a new batch for them. And that was a big game changer. We've saved a lot of time with this module. I think we are saving more time as we grow. Obviously, because now it's doing it on its own.”
– Tadeas Gencur, Co-Owner
Expansion into the EU
In the last year, The Fulfilment Experts expanded into the EU because a large number of their customers have their biggest markets in Europe. During this expansion, they implemented Mintsoft to ensure their customers saw the same insights, dashboards and controls as they do on the UK side.
“For our customers, in terms of customer experience, it was a no-brainer because from one dashboard they can see their inventory in the EU and in the UK. They are also talking to the same customer service team. So, everything is nicely done under one roof. We didn't have to come up with new processes. We didn't have to come up with anything else. We just applied everything the same in the EU as in the UK.”
– Tadeas Gencur, Co-Owner.
“Mintsoft makes it very easy to keep an overview of what's going on. Being able to deal with a company you trust in one location, and then being able to do the same thing in another territory and nothing has to change.”
- Laszlo Nortje, Co-Owner.
Confidence for Peak Season
“We are very confident, but also because we experienced very high growth this year. We are experiencing very high numbers this year, and we've never serviced these sorts of numbers before. So, it will be very interesting to see how we're going to deal with that. But we are just doing everything that we've done before. We've learned from our mistakes, and we're just doubling up on everything.”
– Tadeas Gencur, Co-Owner.