We are back to bring you our weekly Challenge Tuesday! Today we will highlight the challenge of improving warehouse and fulfillment operations to meet the needs of a growing e-commerce business.

Belk, Inc. owns more than 300 fashion department stores in 16 states, as well as a successful e-commerce business. Total sales of Belk.com increased by 108% over the past year. Given this tremendous success, Belk’s e-commerce fulfillment center in Pineville, NC, was expanded to double its original size and that still wasn’t enough room to support their needs.

Challenge: With an additional e-commerce fulfillment center in Jonesville, SC, of more than 500,0000 square feet, Belk needed a way to efficiently and seamlessly manage orders between each warehouse.

Solution:  With the installation of a new order management system, Belk was able to significantly improve the functionality of its warehouse and fulfillment operations, enhancing its overall business performance and efficiency.

Products were split by category between the two warehouses to maximize space. Home and shoe orders are now fulfilled at the Jonesville facility, while everything else is handled at the Pineville center. If Belk receives a customer’s shoe and apparel order, the order management system is able to automatically route each order to the appropriate fulfillment center.

Not only does the new order management system simplify fulfillment, but it also allows Belk to expand its product assortment by offering a vendor-direct program.  With an order manager, vendors that sell products not inventoried in the fulfillment center will now receive order requests and be able to ship the product directly to the customer.

The “Distributed Order Management” system’s coordination, data exchange, and communication between facilities give Belk the business agility to effectively manage their fulfillment operations. Belk is able to increase sales while reducing costs and effort by avoiding the challenges of providing enough inventory space and resources to fulfill these additional orders.

Has your order management system simplified and improved your warehouse and fulfillment operations? Let us know today!

To learn more about Belk’s order manager click here