For two and a half years, we’ve been operating our own ecommerce site. Within that time, it has grown a lot, in unexpected ways. Keeping our processes manageable was a continuous process, which wasn’t without its bumps and issues.
Building a Business
We set out to tackle our processes as we went, improving them over time. As we sought ever more efficiency, we started developing in-house software to automate common processes.
We enjoy working with our software, and it’d be a waste to keep it to ourselves. And so, a year after starting development of our own production management and order picking software, we’re taking the next step: we’re developing our in-house software into a bigger platform that can be used by ecommerce companies of all sizes.
Self-Sustainable Teams
At the start, a single person was responsible for managing operations. While convenient at times, we quickly found out that isn’t scalable. The key to making a business self-sustainable is to empower employees to be able to make decisions themselves. To do that, they need the right information and context.
Using Akpa, we transformed our operations. Using Akpa’s realtime dashboard, they decide on priorities and pick their tasks dynamically. Akpa’s kitting module contains knowledge about kitting and production tasks. Using it, new employees get up to speed quickly and current employees can manage a large number of complex processes, all without making errors. The picking module ensures fast and accurate picks, while the packing module ensures a proper final check and speedy shipping label generation with automated data corrections.
Efficient Operations
Where normal ecommerce businesses require many people to get manual work done, Akpa saves seconds per operation, which extends to quite a few hours a week. This allows us to process our orders with a small team, increasing employee productivity, happiness and thus making for a better employee retention and lower overall costs.
Only the Beginning
As we speak, we’re rebuilding Akpa so it’ll be fit for use by other companies, and extending it with new functionalities that are sought after by small businesses and enterprises alike. We’ll share more as we go and we’re excited to show you what’s new. Thank you for reading!