Successful Outsourcing of Warehousing and Fulfillment Practices

By Paul Morgenthaler, DSV Solutions LLC.

In 2018 DSV was chosen by Kids2 to become their new warehousing and fulfillment provider on the West Coast.  Kids2 is one of the worlds largest manufacturers and marketers of child and baby gear such as car seats and jumpers.
 
One of the primary goals of Kids2 upon implementation was to reduce their retailer chargebacks associated with GS1 Case Labelling, on time routing and shipping, and general order compliance (pallet height, BOL accuracy, etc…).  DSV maintains a North American focused Retail Compliance team, focused solely on warehouse and customer success in preventing and reversing retailer chargebacks, so DSV was well up to the task.
 
In the first year DSV was able to significantly reduce retailer chargebacks due to the above causes, and has assembled a “Top 10” list of best practices for a 3PL or other in-house shipper to prevent chargebacks and stay on top of retail compliance.  DSV continues to maintain a very low, industry leading chargeback incurrence for Kids2 and attributes our success to the below tactics and our operational teams.  DSV believes the below list can be helpful to other shippers whether starting a retail compliance program or maintaining an existing one.
 

1. Maintain a consistent set of retail routing expertise within the warehouse by assigning 1 primary customer routing representative and 1 backup in the case he or she is out.
   
   
2. Maintain a national, retailer-wide key point of contact and SME to own all retail compliance best practices, new retailer implementations, infringement tracking, and technology opportunities.
   
   
3. When chargebacks do occur, track each incident by type, value, retailer and date to monitor trends over time. 
   
   
4. Build and maintain a site specific, simplified set of compliance guidelines for each retailer so a warehouse operator can easily find requirements per retailer without reading an entire guide.
   
   
5. Allow the warehouse to control routing and scheduling (not a corporate or far-off office) so changes can quickly be communicated via the retailer portals and rescheduling or exceptions can be logged in each retailers’ TMS.
   
   
6. Conduct periodic training for key retailer customer service routing representatives to ensure all requirements are fresh and any questions can be addressed early on.
   
   
7. Periodically audit pallet height and pallet preparation on the floor to capture any anomalies to requirements and ensure maximum cubing.
   
   
8. Perform an annual audit between item weights and dimensions between vendor ERP (shipper), 3PL (or WMS) and retailer (TMS) to ensure dimensions and weights align to avoid over and under cubing trucks.
   
   
9. Maintain a detailed and extensive retail compliance checklist for the warehouse to be prepared with each facet of compliance for any new retailers added to a vendors customer / shipping list.
   
   
10. Subscribe to RVCF’s Retail Compliance update feed, allowing the warehouse to get ahead of updates, change EDI or report mapping before an order management team.

Any questions from vendors about DSV’s retail compliance program for our inbound to retail clients would be welcome to directed to Paul Morgenthaler, DSV Sr. Manager of Retail compliance.