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As the holiday season approaches, businesses are preparing for the busiest time of the year. The success of this crucial period hinges on the efficiency of your supply chain. With e-commerce increasing in popularity more and more each year and consumer expectations higher than ever, the ability to deliver fast, accurate, and now more sustainable products can make or break a company’s performance.
During the holidays sales skyrocket, and you must be prepared. Last year, Adobe Analytics predicted a 4.8% increase in sales between November 1 and December 31. This year’s sales on the other hand are starkly predicted to increase 8.4% more than last year’s holiday season.
Needless to say, this is going to be a big season.
However, amongst this excitement, wrapping up 2024 brings unique challenges. From sustainability and transparency demands to labor shortages and high consumer expectations, businesses need to adopt smart, data-driven strategies to navigate these hurdles. From leveraging advanced analytics to diversifying suppliers and building contingency plans, there are several tactics companies can use to optimize their supply chains.
In this blog, we’ll explore the most effective tactics your business can use to optimize your supply chains for the 2024 holiday season.
Leverage Data and Analytics for Demand Forecasting
Accurate forecasting is critical for managing inventory during peak season. By analyzing historical sales data, trends, and consumer behavior, businesses can predict demand more accurately, taking the necessary steps to prepare their suppliers and internal teams for the demand. AI and machine learning tools can also improve these predictions, though they need a centralized and accurate database to pull from.
Accurate forecasting is only possible through a strong data foundation. If your data is scattered in multiple places or living with multiple suppliers, analyzing past trends and performances can be a large undertaking. Even pulling reports can be a difficult task. However, with tools like Specright’s Product Data Management software, keeping track of this data, analyzing your product’s sales trends, and communicating with suppliers, is more achievable than ever going into this holiday season and 2025.
Focus on Sustainability and Transparency
Focusing on sustainable products and packaging is a huge area of emphasis this holiday season. With an increase in production and shipping, optimizing your supply chain to reduce waste, utilizing more sustainable packaging materials, and reducing carbon footprints, is more critical than ever. Especially with EPR laws and other sustainability regulations coming about, knowing exactly what your environmental impact is this holiday season is crucial. With EPR deadlines continuing to be rolled out, such as the March 31, 2024 deadline from the Circular Action Alliance (CAA) and California’s SB-54 Act’s action items, identifying and reporting on your business’ sustainability impacts needs to be addressed now.
Not only is a sustainable focus in your best interest from a regulatory standpoint, but consumers are also very influenced by positive sustainability claims and supply chain transparency. According to Specright’s Consumer Sustainability Survey, 80% of consumers are more likely to trust companies that back up their sustainability claims with publicly shared data. Customers are paying more attention to their environmental impacts, resulting in the importance of knowing where their products came from and how they were made.
Diversify Suppliers and Build Contingency Plans
As we all know, you can be as prepared as possible for this holiday rush, but there will always be factors outside of your control that will affect your business. Weather delays, natural disasters, geopolitical issues, and transportation bottlenecks are all outside factors that can have detrimental and sudden impacts.
Thus, it is crucial to work with multiple suppliers from different regions and build contingency plans to adapt to these risks. While supplier and brand relationships have historically been difficult, especially when it comes to collecting data from various suppliers, modern-day technologies like Specright Network enable businesses to find new suppliers and instantly share data between the two parties. This strengthens communication, collaboration, and traceability with suppliers. Fostering these good relationships is critical and makes adapting to disruptions easier, especially when companies are dealing with hundreds or even thousands of specs and documents.
Another contingency plan to build in is around resource management. Not only do your partners have to be prepared and diversified, but your internal teams do as well. Ensuring scalability by training enough people before holiday rushes is a way to ensure a smooth couple of months. This way, if there are any headcount changes or budget cuts, your team is covered for the busy season.
Monitor and Respond to Real-Time Data
Last but not least, keeping an eye on the demand of your supply chain is critical to staying afloat. It is not enough to just set it and forget it once the season has commenced. Even though your business has taken proactive approaches regarding the holiday season, monitoring your supply chain by using real-time data allows you to respond dynamically to any issues that come up.
This process is made easy through real-time dashboards and data management tools. Implementing tools for supply chain visibility allows you to identify and react quickly to disruptions. Whether it’s switching out one material for another due to recalls or shortages, rapidly increasing or changing SKUs, or even just tracking versions of your product, having digitized specification data that integrates across your supply chain segments allows for better decision-making.
Conclusion: Tactically Achieving this Optimized Supply Chain
By implementing advanced technologies, keeping sustainability a priority, diversifying supplier networks, and monitoring business, companies can successfully navigate the challenges brought on by the 2024 holiday season.
While meeting all of these best practices can be daunting, they are all more than achievable with Specright. The holiday season is temporary, but these best practices will carry your business into 2025 and beyond, allowing you to adapt to anything that comes your way. Discover how you can utilize Specright for full data visibility and strong supplier relationships that will allow you to stay ahead of the curve. Request a demo with my team today.
