Retailer Optimizes Shipping Management:
SPORTING TRADITION WITH CUTTING-EDGE SHIPPING MANAGEMENT

For more than 150 years, the Orvis name has stood for outdoor traditions, quality, and customer satisfaction. Since 1856, the company now has more than 44 retail stores in the United States and the United Kingdom, and more than 500 Orvis dealers worldwide who sell and service the Orvis product line.

Case Study Overview

During the peak of each Christmas season, Orvis ships 50,000 to 60,000 packages a day, up from its normal daily volumes of about 5,000 packages a day. The cataloger’s brick and mortar stores count on Orvis warehouses to ensure stocked shelves. Additionally, mail order customers count on the cataloger to ensure their packages arrive in plenty of time for Christmas, as well as any other time in the year. To maximize customer service operations across the board, Orvis recognized it needed to streamline its processes in order to reduce logistics costs and heighten shipping efficiencies. To achieve optimal shipping performance, Orvis chose CMS WorldLink, our flagship and enterprise-wide transportation management solution.

Orvis's Challenges

As part of an aggressive, multi-pronged approach, Orvis sought to centralize and simplify systems administration across its multiple warehouses in order to address several challenges such as:

• Optimize per-package carrier and delivery methods
  Based on a combination of days in transit, rates, and user-defined carrier performance criteria
• Implement business rules
  Consistently across all shipping locations
• Manage shipping costs through built-in analytical tools
  Such as customized reporting, that could break out shipping costs—drilled down to the service level—by user-defined categories, such as mail order rather than retail costs.

“This sporting goods retailer ships about 90% of its 2.5 to 3 million
annual packages using our CMS WorldLink BestWay add-on module,
which saves the company on average approximately $500,000 a year.”

Wil Fekeci
President, CMS GlobalSoft

The Solution

By deploying CMS WorldLink and various add-on modules, Orvis was able to achieve the following:

• Implementation of least-cost delivery methods
  Orvis ships about 90% of its 3 million annual packages using the BestWay module, which allows the company to focus on (a) least-cost routing based on carrier and service, including special service charges, (b) least-cost routing based on days in transit, and (c) user-defined carrier performance criteria.
• Establishment of centralized, consistent business rules
  Orvis was able to establish centralized business rules enterprise-wide, facilitating shipping practices across its two warehouses and store locations.
• E-mail notification of shipping
  Through the E-mail Shipping Notification module, Orvis can now send a single e-mail to a recipient, summarizing information about multiple shipments.
• Track business line activity via custom reports
  The Custom Reports & Labels module allows Orvis to drill down into high level detail, looking at breakouts in each unit by service type, package count and total shipping costs.

The Outcome

After implementing CMS WorldLink and the selected add-on modules, Orvis saves $500,000 a year as a result of streamlining its logistics management operations company-wide. Customer service levels have also increased significantly—a direct result of heightened shipping efficiencies made possible by CMS WorldLink.

Since Orvis’s peak volumes rocket to almost 60,000 packages daily, speed is an extremely important factor. One of CMS WorldLink’s biggest selling points for Orvis decision makers was its sub-second processing speeds. Our technology also gives Orvis the freedom to process orders as they come in since no delay time is required to specifically configure the conveyor based on package sizes.“

 

Wil Fekeci
President, CMS GlobalSoft

Add-on modules in use by Orvis today

Rate Shopping/Best Way
Employees can rate packages via deliver date across multiple carriers and multiple services. You can also balance delivery speed versus shipping cost.

e-Motion
CMS WorldLink’s e-Motion module is the industry’s first enterprise, in-motion shipping application that weighs, labels, manifests, and sorts parcels. For packages requiring labels, e-Motion’s sophisticated technology manages a stunning 1,200 to 1,500 packages per hour on a single conveyor belt—and there are no limitations on the number of conveyors e-Motion can manage.

Custom Reports & Labels
Companies wanting to build custom reports will benefit greatly from our Custom Reports Utility. CMS WorldLink uses Crystal Reports as a standard template writer. The Custom Label utility includes a library of sample compliance labels for various retailers.

E-mail Notification
Launch shipping notification e-mails to your senders/recipients that contain any information captured by CMS WorldLink, such as ship date, delivery method, tracking number and accessorial costs. Moreover, this module comes already configured to include a hyperlink to the carrier web site for self tracking by the recipient.