How to Build a Resilient, Agile Supply Chain for Peak Season Success

Why Peak Season Pushes Supply Chains to the Limit

Peak Season occurs when consumer demand hits a seasonal high. Many retailers experience multiple peaks. For example, an online retailer may see a surge in consumer interest during Black Friday and January sales. Demand increases can also occur during key holidays such as Christmas or Valentine's Day.

During these times, consumers expect to receive a good deal on the products they purchase and to have their orders filled quickly and accurately. If you're a retailer with both a physical store and an online presence, you'll need to balance omnichannel fulfilment and offer some continuity with the shopping experience.

Meeting demand during peak season is challenging enough on its own, but many retailers also face external issues, such as tariffs, labor shortages, and extreme weather that can interfere with shipping. Effective supply chain management involves planning for common disruptions, maintaining visibility into your supply chain to manage challenges, and responding to changing conditions quickly and effectively.

Supply chain management tools can help retailers manage their inventory across multiple channels, predict customer demand, and track unforeseen challenges that might cause delays or disruptions. Armed with this information and tools to automate various aspects of the supply chain, retailers are better able to respond to changing conditions and capitalise on consumer interests.

The Biggest Peak Season Pitfalls

Peak seasons can push supply chains to their limits in several ways, including:

• Forecasting misses: Under- or over-estimating consumer demand can lead to stockouts or overstock situations. Stockouts cause customer disappointment and may lead them to go elsewhere, not only for that specific purchase, but also for other items in their cart. Overstock situations can be problematic, especially when dealing with perishable goods or products that experience dramatic price fluctuations.
• Siloed planning vs. execution: Data silos create delays and disconnects, making it difficult for store, warehouse, and transportation managers to plan and respond to changing market conditions. When your respective departments lack access to the data they need in real time, it puts you at a disadvantage compared to other retailers that can respond to shifting trends or unforeseen events and deliver a consistent, high-quality experience for their customers. 
• Lack of agility: Consumer trends are often short-lived, but those who can capitalise on them stand to profit. Unforeseen events, such as storms, strikes, or large protests blocking delivery routes, can disrupt your supply chain. Being able to react decisively gives retailers a competitive advantage.
• Labour shortages: Many retailers hire temporary employees during peak seasons to cope with holiday requests from regular workers and manage spikes in foot traffic or order volumes. New staff members take time to get up to speed, and hiring new workers can be costly and time-consuming. Accurately projecting staff requirements and maintaining a pool of trained workers can help ensure the peak season runs smoothly.

Other challenges retailers often face include deciding how to fill limited inventory space and meeting tight delivery deadlines. Retailers that offer flexible delivery options and provide a good range of products that satisfy their core market are more likely to achieve customer loyalty during their peak seasons.

What Strategies Do Retailers Need for Peak Season Resilience?

With the right tools and strategies, retailers can build strong and resilient supply chains that will serve them well during their peak seasons. Good supply chain management involves anticipating and reacting to current and future peak season challenges. 

Consider these tips when preparing for your store's peak seasons:

• Always-On Forecasting: Use data from previous years, combined with current sales information, to create and adjust demand forecasts. Modern supply chains use AI/ML (machine learning) to continuously adjust forecasts as more details become available. This helps facilitate decisive data-driven decision-making.
• Unified Inventory Visibility: Omnichannel retailers can take advantage of supply chain management tools that integrate with their stock management systems to provide unified inventory visibility. This ensures stock is always in the right place at the right time, providing customers with a good experience, regardless of the channel they use.
• Execution Awareness: Communication between departments is crucial, even outside peak seasons. When you keep labour, transportation, and warehouse capacity in sync with real-time plans, you ensure maximum agility and have more information available to help you respond to other challenges.

How Manhattan Active® Supply Chain Planning Helps

Manhattan Active® Supply Chain Planning is an all-in-one solution that unifies forecasting, replenishment, and allocation, providing clear visibility into all aspects of your supply chain.

Our unified cloud-native platform unifies warehouse, transportation, omnichannel commerce, and labour management solutions, enabling retailers to gather data from across their supply chain seamlessly and execute real-time plans.

Manhattan Active Supply Chain Planning provides tools and views that can be used at all levels of the organisation, including developer environments for third-party integrations and automations. We also offer a mobile app for real-time insights and easy-to-use wizards for automating workflows.

The platform helps retailers build agile supply chains that can pivot instantly as demand shifts, providing critical responsiveness that helps retailers survive peak season and capitalise on the opportunities it creates.

To learn more about Manhattan Active Supply Chain Planning and how it can help your organisation build an agile and resilient supply chain, contact us to book a consultation with one of our experts.