As the Black Friday shopping frenzy dies down and shoppers eagerly await their orders, SMBs are left scrambling behind the scenes to meet the demand, with warehouse workers and entire teams toiling on an intensified schedule.
Labor shortages, hectic hours, and pressure on overtime…it all adds up to the perfect storm of warehouse chaos, causing inaccuracies in order picking, inefficient fulfillment, and ultimately, a whole lot of stress for SMBs.
Do These Black Friday Challenges Sound Familiar?
For weeks after Black Friday, SMBs with traditional (manual) warehouses spend long days packing orders, often falling behind to a growing backlog. Customers expect their orders fast, demanding arrival within 3 days, or same-day delivery in metropolitan areas. And if they have to wait, they’re less than pleased—after all, if industry giants are offering same day delivery, why should they settle for the slower experience of ordering from an SMB?
To keep up with customer expectations and bolster the speed of their warehouse operations, you’re forced to hire temporary workers, or even turn to friends and family for extra hands. However, each new worker requires a learning period, and they’re prone to making errors as they familiarize themselves with the inventory and warehouse processes.
What’s more, any inaccuracy in inventory management can result in selling products you don’t actually have in stock. And when you have to notify a customer that their order will be further delayed, you’ll likely lose them.
As you struggle to keep afloat of the rising demands, the next round of holiday sales is just around the corner. There’s no time to catch a break—as soon as Black Friday hits, the order backlog begins, and often continues for the entire holiday season.
So, What’s the Solution?
Pio, our automated warehouse system, boosts productivity in warehouse operations year-round, but its efficiency-enhancing powers are particularly helpful during seasonal spikes like Black Friday.
Warehouse automation allows you to get more done with fewer employees, optimizing for speed and accuracy of order fulfillment and inventory management. Pio’s robots and software work alongside human workers to not only mitigate the physical strain of the job (way less heavy lifting and walking down aisles), but also streamline the order fulfillment process from beginning to end.
Our customers have felt the difference firsthand—since installing Pio in their warehouses with a 99.9% accuracy in picking and order fulfillment. Compared to manual picking processes, Pio unlocks an average pick rate of at least 130 picks per hour, even with fewer employees.
"Before Pio, Black Friday meant a lot of picking mistakes, cancelled orders due to overselling, and other warehouse issues. With Pio, we can focus on selling more, with less errors, less customer service, and less people to manage."
Greg Taube, CEO of Famme
The Pio Difference
Pio’s robots work round the clock to prepare bins for order picking, keeping track of all inventory updates seamlessly. The Pio app can even be set to prioritize certain orders for same-day shipping. Plus, returns with Pio are much more efficient than manual processes, allowing items to be put swiftly and directly back into the system for quick resales before the holiday season ends.
As our robots take on repetitive, mundane warehouse tasks with unrivaled precision and speed, human workers can focus on more complex tasks for impressing Black Friday customers, such as writing thank you notes or adding special touches when packing orders.
"It used to take us three days to fulfill the same number of orders. Now we manage them with 2/3 of the workforce and much faster—we're done by Monday. I cannot stress enough how incredibly important it is that customers receive their items quickly. We can now do this thanks to our robots."
Richard Bendiksen, CEO of Vakre Vene
This is Your Future Warehouse
Tackling Black Friday with and without a Pio system is as distinct as night from day—or better said, as different as past versus future. Once you experience the game-changing power of warehouse automation, you’ll feel like manual warehouses are stuck in the Stone Age. Make the stress of the holiday season ancient history by switching to Pio. Its speed, power, and accuracy unlocks lightning-fast order delivery, helping your business achieve what matters most—happy, satisfied customers who will return to shop, again and again.
