Explainer: Finding the Right Time

It is your responsibility to assess the risks that may be in the way of getting your goods to your customer. Risks will be either internal or external, technical or operational, within your control or beyond your control.

Related: The Perfect Order: Right Time

Your customer—and for retail vendors, this is especially applicable—isn’t concerned with your problems; they just want your goods. Since some risks beyond reasonable control (e.g., natural disasters) are likely to find a sympathetic ear with customers, other risks that are technical and operational that you should have had a handle on will unlikely be reason to avoid chargebacks (financial penalties for non-compliance) or consumer ire or complaints.

Risks that will prevent your customer from receiving their goods at the right time include:

• Natural disasters (e.g., delays due to bad weather), some which you can avoid if you look at weather reports
• Misdirected shipments (e.g., because you the vendor didn’t pay attention to retail notifications of distribution center closing or distribution center/store realignment)
• Traffic delays (rush hour, construction, weather)
• Geopolitical situations (e.g., border closings, labor strikes, policy changes, regulatory requirements)
• Port-of-entry delays (e.g., holds in customs, incorrect or insufficient documentation)
• Material delays (supplier stock-outs)
• Supplier delays (sole-source or major-source supplier goes out of business or delays your company’s orders in lieu of another customer or payment problems)
• Manufacturing delays (machine down-time, maintenance failures, no backup of parts or equipment)
• Software system issues (downtime, integration failures, data problems)
• Make-to-order versus make-to-stock decisions
• Wait-time delays (inefficient operations, lack of labor, poorly trained staff, machine problems, software issues, yard or dock mismanagement)

At the Right Time means both not-too-early and not-too-late. But it also requires that the risks to ensuring that the goods are delivered for use or sale at the right time are identified, quantified, and remediated to maintain the best state of performance in being able to consistently meet customer expectation.

Where vendors often have difficulty is in the running and synchronization of their software systems (EDI, ERP) and operations to the same level as their retailer customers. Retailers will send purchase orders 24/7, and as early as 5 a.m. EST. Advance ship notices need to be sent within one hour of the shipment leaving the facility, not at the end of the day. Retailers are becoming more demanding in receiving more frequent—even hourly—updates of inventory availability. And retailers are pushing vendors for more and increasingly detailed information. Essentially, retailers expect that vendors have software systems and operations that are equivalent to their own. So, for vendors, the right time requires the right integrated software systems coordinated to tightly running business operations.

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