The End-to-End eCommerce Playbook - For Magento, Episerver and Maginus OMS Maginus

Helping RSPB Handle 250% Spike in Orders During Pandemic
In this podcast we chat to Wayne Martin, Operations Manager at RSPB about:


The impact of the Covid crisis on RSPB
How they've managed to handle a 250% spike in online orders
How they've managed to improve productivity AND keep workers safe
How Maginus OMS has helped

Duration: 11 minutes

For more information about our work with the RSPB watch our latest video case study. - https://www.maginus.com/imagine/videos/RSPB/


Transcript

Janice: Right, question number one… so Wayne how has the Covid crisis affected the RSPB business?

Wayne: Due to the lockdown RSPB had to close all their reserves, and on each of the reserves is a store, and what that did was push the demand through the warehouse - online. We had an uplift in web sales of 250% of what we'd normally be getting this time of year. So, we had the challenges of picking a lot more orders (with less people). I couldn't increase the head count due to the social distancing issues that we were going through. So, we had to to use the system and we had to work quickly because the orders were coming in so fast. We had to work quickly on different ideas of how we could manipulate Maginus OMS to work for us faster. So what we were able to do is take the order pool and manipulate it so we could pull out orders that were in certain aisles  which allowed us to put in place the social distancing measures in place – so we weren’t overcrowding one aisle with say 10, 15 pickers at a time. We were able to spread the pickers out. It's about keeping that two metre distancing rule in place…. We bought in a small cleaning station… all the stations now have perspex between them to ensure that we've got as much social distance in as possible and I think it's paid off.

When you look at the things that are going on in Leicester at the moment - they've gone back into lockdown - and they’re claiming some of their work areas are just carrying on as normal - and they've seen a spike. So we've done everything that we can to ensure that we're not flooding the place with people we're spreading them out and we've delivered more, with the same. So it's it's been a win-win. On average we'd have around about two pickers per aisle covering around about 18 bays. So there’s plenty of space for them to do the social distancing - no bottlenecking or bumping into each other which allowed us to actually increase our productivity.

Janice: So you've had to reduce the number of pickers per aisle and you've had this massive increase in orders so how have you actually increased the productivity?

Wayne: What [Maginus OMS] did was it [allowed] us to reduce the pickers travel time. So rather than the picker going out with say five orders and he would be picking the five orders throughout the eight or nine racks that we pick from. We were able to narrow it down so that the pickers were picking  a lot quicker than they'd normally do. So we're having to take time out to to manipulate the system, but what Maginus has allowed us to do is alter the way that we could release the orders.

Another report that Maginus was able to give us - is what we call a “hit list” or a heat map - which could identify how many times we were visiting a location. If we're not visiting a location and it was sitting outside the footprint. Maginus would show us the most economic footprint to finish the pick.

To view the full transcript visit: https://www.maginus.com/imagine/articles/podcast-rspb-250-spike/

D2C eCommerce: Keeping Your Retail Partners Happy when Selling Direct
If you’re relying only on word of mouth for new customers or think that your customers don’t want to buy online you’re missing out.

In just 10 minutes, you'll learn:


3 approaches to go Direct-to-Consumer without ruining your retail relationships
10 things to consider when going direct to consumer

Duration: 10 minutes

Useful Resources

Direct to Consumer Ecommerce in a Post-Covid19 Landscape - https://www.maginus.com/imagine/reports/direct-to-consumer-ecommerce/

Transcript

Hi, I'm Toby Clements, Account Executive at Maginus. Welcome to part 2  of the Direct-to-Consumer eCommerce series. In this session we address  the elephant in the room: How can you go Direct-to-Consumer without  damaging your retail relationships? We will aso outline 10 things you  should consider when preparing to go Direct-to-Consumer.

Right, let's get started.

--

So what about the elephant in the room? So keeping distributors happy  and maintaining control. There's three ways to do this or three ways  that I've done in the past which is 1. stage releases, 2. partial  releases and 3. exclusive releases.

So, stage releases - you have MPD and NPI launched over different channels at different times.

You have partial releases which is individual SKU’s released on some channels but not on others.

Then you also have exclusive releases where you would have an exclusive product line which would only go to certain channels.

So again back to Tommee Tippee for an example of this.

In a first example which is a stage release - you may have your  direct consumer release which could be one week, three weeks or ten  weeks before the retailer release and all of the models within the range  will get released on the the retailer site at the that time.

The next option is the partial release - so you'll have a direct  consumer release and the retail release at the same time but you hold  back unique SKU’s, it could be certain colourways, it could be an  enhanced version of the product with a better feature. It totally  depends on your how your business operates and your catalogue.

Then the next one is the exclusive release which is where only the  Direct-to-Consumer channel would have the product line and the retailer  wouldn't get it.

Now depending on how aggressive you are in your approach to  Direct-to-Consumer you can actually just flip this model on its head and  actually you would initiate the retailer release first. So you would  support your retailers then launch later on your D2C - to show your  commitment to them and then realise that Direct-to-Consumer benefit. You  can do the partial release where you would only have core lines  yourself and you can also do the exclusive release with your retailers  and then just have the classic “find a retailer” link.

Now there are reasons why you would do this the other way round.  First of all is to be less aggressive but also in terms of the exclusive  releases it may be because you sell something like a pram or a car seat  that requires either some kind of fitting or requires some kind of  practical demonstration and the customers don't yet have the confidence  to buy that product online.

For the full transcript visit: https://www.maginus.com/imagine/articles/d2c-ecommerce-podcast-keeping-retailers-happy/

Direct to Consumer (DTC) Ecommerce is expected to grow by 71% this year alone. Find out why many manufacturers are rising above disruption with D2C eCommerce.

In just 15 minutes, you'll learn:


The Case for Selling Direct
What is the 'Distributor Disconnect'?

Duration: 15 minutes

Resources:


Direct to Consumer Ecommerce in a Post-Covid19 Landscape - https://www.maginus.com/imagine/reports/direct-to-consumer-ecommerce/


Transcript

Hey everyone, welcome to The End-to-End eCommerce playbook hosted by  Maginus. I’m Toby Clements, Account Executive at Maginus. Today we're  sharing an extract from our DTC eCommerce webinar that we hosted back in  May. At the time of the recording we were in the early stages of  lockdown it's fair to say it was a strange time for us all. Retail  stores temporarily shut down, Amazon suspended shipments to its  warehouses and consumers were staying at home. As a result, businesses  of all shapes and sizes have lost their main channel to market.

The  Centre for Retail Research predicts that by the end of the year a total of over 20,000 retail stores will have pulled down their shutters for the final time. This is why we believe setting up a direct to consumer  eCommerce channel should be considered as an insurance policy against an  uncertain future for manufacturers, brands and distributors. So keep  listening to hear from Aiden Connor today's guest who's a consultant at  RICS. He'll be sharing his experience with working with the likes of  Tommee Tippee - helping them go direct to consumer.

The podcast itself is split into two parts. In part one, Aiden will outline the case for selling direct to consumer and the distributer  disconnect….and in part two we outline three approaches you can take to  avoid damaging your retail relationships and 10 things you should  consider when preparing to go D2C.

Right, let's get started.

Aidan: Thanks very much everybody for being here. I’m Aiden Connor,  i'm currently Head of Digital Experience at the Royal Institute of  Chartered Surveyors. Previously I was Global Digital Platform Manager at  Mayborn Group, and International Digital and eCommerce Marketing  Manager at Rayovac Energizer and i'll pull some kind of real-world  examples from both of the latter two today.

So, why go D2C?

The businesses that i've worked with in the past - the reason that they've gone direct to consumer is to take control and put their customer first. So you can remove that disconnect between you the brand manufacturer and the consumer themselves.



To view the full transcript visit: https://www.maginus.com/imagine/articles/d2c-ecommerce-the-case-for-selling-direct-podcast/

In this podcast our host Tom Williams, Head of eCommerce at Maginus chats to Mel Tymm, Industry Principal about:


The Impact of the Covid Crisis on Buying Behaviour
How eCommerce businesses can tackle increased online orders and social distancing
How RSPB Improved Productivity by 15% During Pandemic
3 Essential Fulfilment KPI's  You Should be Monitoring and Why

Duration: 24 minutes

Show Notes


5 Order Fulfilment KPI's You Can't Ignore - https://www.maginus.com/imagine/reports/order-fulfilment-kpis/



Transcript

Welcome to “The End to End eCommerce Playbook” hosted by Maginus.  We’ll share tips, tactics and real customer insights to help you take  your online business to the next level.

Tom: Hi everyone, welcome to the first episode of the end-to-end  eCommerce playbook, my name is Tom Williams - I'm the Head of eCommerce  at Maginus. Today we're going to have a chat talking about warehouse  best practice in light of COVID and some essential fulfilment KPI’s that  you should consider in your day-to-day operations and continue to use  in a post-COVID world.

Here with me is my colleague Mel Tymm, Mel is our Head of Pre-Sales  at Maginus. Later we'll also be talking to Wayne Martin, Operations  Manager at RSPB - one of our longest-standing Maginus OMS customers.  He'll give a different perspective on how to handle KPIs for the  warehouse how technology has helped him, touching on some of the points  we'll raise in this first section. Right, let's get going.

--

Mel: Hi Tom, how you doing? Not too bad thank you. So Mel, would you  like to give us a little bit of background about yourself and your role  at Maginus?

Mel: Oh yeah sure. So um my role here at Maginus is Industry  Principal. So what I do is I head up all the pre-sale activity for  Maginus OMS. It’s a great and varied role - I spend a lot of time  talking to our existing retail customers and prospect retail customers  and how they can use technology to improve their business. I enjoy my  role and I get to speak to lots of retailers and at the current time  what we're trying to do is help them in this COVID environment and how  they move forward into the foreseeable future. So over the last three  months, businesses have had to restructure quite significantly to one  keep themselves open but then to fulfil what they're saying they're  going to fulfil.

Tom: So an awful lot of people have restructured their warehouses  reduced the amount of products which they are going to sell so that they  can fulfil and reduce the amount of um interaction in warehouses but as  we move more into a normal state and people's expectations are not  covered anymore it's even though we are still having to treat it as such  what do you think the impacts will be in getting back to more of a  normal state around that?



To view the full episode / transcript visit: https://www.maginus.com/imagine/articles/podcast-episode-1-order-fulfilment-kpis-you-cant-ignore/