Solution Profile: Online retailer More than 4,000 SKUs Increased inventory control Reduction in labor costs SCE Provider: HighJump Software, Inc.

Overstock.com is a leading Internet retailer of name-brand surplus and close-out merchandise. Headquartered in Salt Lake City, this e-commerce site specializes in selling first-quality merchandise at deep discounts with the promise of two-day shipping.

Challenge
High traffic and rapid growth resulted in more than a 2,000 percent increase in sales at Overstock.com from September 1999 to July 2000. While the customer shopping experience was a seamless, paperless transaction, the order fulfillment side was a low-tech "paper chase" for the warehouse personnel. The company's management team was looking for a highly adaptable, comprehensive and automated warehouse system that could be quickly implemented to boost efficiency and eliminate any problems with filling orders quickly and accurately.

Solution
Overstock.com found the solution it wanted in a warehouse management suite. Overstock.com can now successfully manage the picking, packing, receiving and delivery operations of more than 4,000 SKUs with a fully automated fulfillment process and real-time order and inventory visibility. Management is also impressed with the flexibility and reporting power inherent in the suite. The solution has great tools to help us monitor individual and team productivity, which was a real selling point with us," said Jim Hyde, Vice President of Operations at Overstock.com. "The interface gives us greater visibility of a wealth of productivity information that we previously could not access … this was the smoothest software installation I've ever seen. Our normal volume is approximately 1,700 orders per day. The day we took the system live, we fulfilled 800 orders; the next day we did 900; and on the third day we were at full volume," Jim Hyde, Overstock.com.

Results
With its high level of adaptability, the warehouse management solution provides Overstock.com with the perfect future-proof technology to continue its unprecedented growth and maintain its competitive edge as a top online retailer. "Given the nature of our business, we often have a fairly dynamic inventory, with many thousand SKUs in the warehouse at any given time," Hyde said. "The system allows us to track the inbound inventory and manage our rapidly changing inventory more easily and efficiently than ever before.

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