The Challenge
A luxury lifestyle brand’s ecommerce site experienced an enviable predicament: demand was high – so high, in fact, that the company’s existing fulfillment systems were starting to stress as they tried to keep up with processing the volume of outbound orders. Realizing their existing fulfillment infrastructure would not be scalable to match anticipated growth, they selected new OMS and WMS systems to replace their existing systems. Following the vendor selection, Sophelle was engaged to provide project management oversight for the implementation of, and transition to, the new systems.
Sophelle’s Assessment
Called upon to provide oversight and guidance on all facets of the project requirements definition, development, testing, inventory planning, project timeline, cut-over, and post launch, Sophelle immediately identified certain key areas of focus:
- Requirements – Well planned, detailed requirements served as foundation for successful development and testing phases.
- Relationships – Working on-site at all key stakeholder locations was critical to build trust and mutual respect. It also was invaluable to gain an integral understanding that fed into the requirements.
- Legal Agreements – Ensuring service levels and shipment timing requirements were properly documented in the vendor contracts was be important to continue to meet customer expectations.
- Call Center – The client’s in-house and 3rd party call center would be heavily impacted by the transition to the new systems, thus making them a particularly critical project stakeholder.
Solution
Working closely with all key stakeholders, Sophelle oversaw a detailed requirements analysis process as well as a thorough review of legal contracts to ensure service level agreements and shipment timing requirements were firmly established.
Sophelle diligently included the client’s Customer Care Center as a key player in the requirements and testing phases, carefully preparing them for how their existing methods, business rules, and processes would be impacted by the transition to the new systems. The call center was well positioned and confident at the time of transition.
Sophelle delivered not only project management, but an exceptional level of consultative project leadership, demonstrating a blend of operational and technical savvy, and providing a knowledge bridge across a variety of disciplines – legal, logistics, call center, and IT. This cross-functional insight was critical to the thoughtful planning and precisely orchestrated implementation and transition.
Result
As a result of the project, the client received a more competent, fully functional order management system, a highly-scalable logistics framework, and an educated team of e-commerce fulfillment experts. Despite the ever-increasing volume of orders, fulfillment capacity was no longer a top concern.
Please contact Sophelle today for more information.
