Make Onboarding Great Again

Client Onboarding - Don’t Lose Before You Start

Good Morning!

Congratulations, you got a verbal commitment from a client who wants to move forward.

Now the fun starts. You need a project plan that ensures a smooth onboarding process.

I am a firm believer that if you onboard clients successfully, you will absolutely reduce the likelihood of clients leaving you later on.

We’ll walk through the essential steps involved in onboarding a new client to ensure that your customer made the right choice in choosing your 3PL!

Implementation Starting Point

On the initial implementation call make sure that you have, if possible, multiple stakeholders from the brand side.

Best practice is to bring on the customer service/account manager in addition to the warehouse manager from your side as well.

It’s at this point where you introduce what roles everyone will play in the success of the relationship.

Clearly define when and how they should should reach out to who and how to handle escalations.

Get the client into their own slack channel with all stakeholders to ensure accountability on both parties ends.

Getting that “buy in” is a good early sign that the brand is ready to commit to you and is serious about making the transition.

Remember that moving 3PL’s is a very stressful time for the brands. It is your job to make the complicated stuff seem easy.

First things first is you creating a mutual onboarding template.

I am a big believer in working backwards from the “go live” date to ensure that you and the brand can successfully hit milestones during onboarding.

Break it down into manageable milestones and deliverables, ensuring everyone is on the same page about what needs to be accomplished and when.

The go live date creeps up on everyone. I will illustrate what I mean.

Let’s use June 3rd as your go live date.

In order to start shipping all orders by then, all inventory would need to arrive no more than 3 business days ahead of the go live date to ensure timely inbound receiving. I am using 3 business days as a proxy as that seems to be around the industry average.

That means inventory needs to arrive on May 29th. 

In order for it to hit the new warehouse by May 29th, you need to give 4-5 business days to ship FTL/LTL.

Inventory needs to ship no later than May 24th from the old 3PL, or potentially longer if you have an overseas manufacturer.

You can see how quick time goes and what action items need to be accomplished in order for you to hit the go live date.

This type of project planning can be done on excel or a project management software that should be relatively cheap to implement.

Let’s dive into some of the more granular topics that can be accomplished in three separate meetings.

Tactical Meeting # 1

On this first tactical onboarding call you will want to do some of the basics like integrating new e-commerce stores and/or marketplaces to the merchant portal.

Be sure that every stakeholder on the brand side has a login to the merchant portal, if they want.

After, you will want to sync the SKUS so that they are available within the inventory/products section of the dashboard.

Merge any like SKUS from different platforms but are the same physical product.

Make sure that every SKU has a barcode on it as well as this will help the operations team when it comes to picking the correct item.

Additionally, set up the packaging type accordingly for each product. Determine whether each item needs to be packed in a box, bubble mailer, poly mailer, or ship in own container.

Also, if there are any SKUS that need fragile packaging, ensure that is communicated as well.

You will want to also review any retail routing guides and packaging instructions for any retail fulfillment as well.

Reviewing this in detail to mitigate any chargebacks will be key. (This could be a separate call in its entirety if you choose)

The next part will go into detail around what a transition plan should look like.

Smooth Transition (Meeting #2)

You will want to have a dedicated call to discuss the complete transition plan to ensure you minimize any transition headaches.

Collaborate closely with the brand to devise a robust plan for relocating their inventory. Consider both current and future stock to streamline the transition process.

The best approach is to do a phased transition.

In this approach, inventory is gradually shifted from the old 3PL to yours, allowing for a seamless transition without disrupting order fulfillment operations.

You also have the option to send all new PO’s from the manufacturer to your 3PL and then have the brand do a bulk outbound order for the remaining stock they have at the old 3PL.

The goal is to ensure the brand can continue to sell without shutting down any of the websites/marketplaces. You need to help them minimize any potential downtime.

The point at which the inventory is depleted, the new 3PL would start fulfilling your orders.

Have the brand review the last 6-12 months of sales data for each SKU to better understand sales velocity and demand patterns. This will help them identify how much inventory is needed on hand at both 3PL’s while they transition.

You should then have the brand calculate safety stock levels for each SKU to protect against any spikes in demand or delays in restocking during this transition period.

During this transfer plan, start first with the inventory that is non critical or slowing moving item, then move to the better performing ones.

This will allow the brand to maintain current operations and manage resources more efficiently.

Rule of thumb is to keep 2-3 weeks of inventory at the old 3PL ( this needs to account for freight transit time as well as the time it takes the new 3PL to receive and stow the inventory), and send the remainder of the inventory to the your 3PL.

This way, the old 3PL can continue shipping while the you prepare what you need to on your end.

Once they are fully onboarded and have ample stock levels your fulfillment center, have them consider running a sale to clear out the inventory in the old location — but make sure your OMS technology is set up to route those orders to the old 3PL.

Once you have the inventory - it is time to schedule test orders and the “go live” moment.

Test and GO LIVE (Meeting #3)

Now you have the inventory at the warehouse and its time to do some final setup before going live with test orders.

First, set up the shipping options so that the speed/service match appropriately.

Meaning, if someone ordered 2-day shipping on the website or marketplace, ensure that there is a 2-day shipping option mapped properly.

The last thing you want to do ship a 2-day order with a slow ground service!

After shipping mapping is complete, it’s time to build any bundles/kits, if applicable.

Ensure that return SOP’s are set up properly and train the brand on how to best leverage the (hopeful) analytics dashboard.

This should be easily done through the merchant portal (most 3PL’s have this functionality that has a fairly easy setup)

Finally, have the brand set up their banking info so you can process orders in the warehouse.

It’s time to start doing testing orders.

I recommend having the brand put in 3 different test orders to themselves with varying shipping speeds.

The goal here is to ensure that the orders are packaged correctly to whatever standard both parties agreed upon.

Assuming the test orders worked out well, it is time to go live.

Turn that sync orders button to ON and watch the orders start to pour in!

Well, that’s it for this week!

Any topics you lovely people would like to see me discuss in the future?

Feel free to email me or DM on good ole LinkedIn.

Until next time.

Cheers,

Hodes